directly or indirectly, publicly or privately, have anything to do with his business, nor give advice upon anything whatever,’ and that Bute's brother, James Stuart Mackenzie, should be dismissed from his office of lord privy seal in Scotland (Grenville Papers, iii. 185, 187). Though the whigs for years continued to denounce Bute's secret influence behind the throne, it seems tolerably certain that all communications whatever on political matters between Bute and the king ceased from this time (Correspondence of King George III with Lord North, 1867, vol. i. pp. xx–xxi n.). It is true that he continued to visit the princess until her death, but ‘when the king came to see his mother, Lord Bute always retired by a back staircase’ (Dutens, Memoirs of a Traveller now in Retirement, 1806, iv. 183).
Bute twice voted against the government on the American question in February 1766 (see Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. iii. p. 22). On 17 March following he both spoke and voted against the third reading of the bill for the repeal of the Stamp Act, ‘entirely from the private conviction he had of its very bad and dangerous consequences both to this country and our colonys’ (Caldwell Papers, Maitland Club, 1854, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 82). He was re-elected a Scottish representative peer in May 1768, and in the same year visited Barèges for the sake of his health. He subsequently went to Italy, where he remained for more than a year travelling incognito under the name of Sir John Stuart. He frequently complained of the malevolent attacks made on his character by his political opponents, and of the neglect and ingratitude of the king. ‘Few men,’ he writes to Home, ‘have ever suffered more in the short space I have gone through of political warfare’ (Works of John Home, ed. Henry Mackenzie, 1822, i. 151). The death of the princess dowager in February 1772 left him ‘without a single friend near the royal person,’ and ‘I have taken,’ he tells Lord Holland, ‘the only part suited to my way of thinking—that of retiring from the world before it retires from me’ (Trevelyan, Early Life of C. J. Fox, 1881, p. 277). Early in 1778 his friend, Sir James Wright, and Dr. Addington, Chatham's physician, engaged in a futile attempt to bring about a political alliance between Bute and Chatham. Bute took the opportunity of unequivocally denying his secret influence with the king, and declared that he had no wish or inclination to take any part in public affairs (Quarterly Review, lxvi. 265–6). Though his attendance had ‘not been very constant’ in the house, Bute was again re-elected a Scottish representative peer in November 1774. Lord North considered that ‘a dowager first lord of the treasury has a claim to this distinction, and we do not now want a coup d'état to persuade the most ordinary newspaper politician that Lord Bute is nothing more’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. App. p. 209). Bute retired from parliament at the dissolution in September 1780 on the ground of his advanced age (ib. 10th Rep. App. vi. p. 38). He spent most of his time during the last six or seven years of his life at his marine villa at Christ Church in Hampshire. He died at his house in South Audley Street, Grosvenor Square, London, on 10 March 1792, aged 78, and was buried at Rothesay in the island of Bute.
Bute's widow, who was born at Pera in February 1718, and succeeded on her father's death, in February 1761, to his extensive estates in Yorkshire and Cornwall, died at Isleworth in Middlesex on 6 Nov. 1794, aged 76. Bute had a family of five sons and six daughters: (1) John, viscount Mount Stuart, born on 30 June 1744, who was created Baron Cardiff in the peerage of Great Britain on 20 May 1766. He succeeded to the earldom of Bute on the death of his father, and on the death of his mother to the barony of Mount Stuart. He was further advanced to the viscounty of Mountjoy, the earldom of Windsor, and the marquisate of the county of Bute on 21 March 1796. He held the post of envoy to Turin from 1779 to 1783, was ambassador to Spain in 1783, and died at Geneva on 16 Nov. 1814, leaving a large family, of whom Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart is separately noticed. (2) James Archibald (1747–1818), father of James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, first baron Wharncliffe [q. v.] (3) Frederick, born in September 1751, M.P. for Buteshire, who died on 17 May 1802. (4) Sir Charles Stuart (1753–1801) [q. v.] (5) William Stuart (1755–1822) [q. v.], archbishop of Armagh. (6) Mary, who became the wife of James Lowther, earl of Lonsdale [q. v.] (7) Jane, who became the wife of George Macartney, earl Macartney [q. v.] (8) Anne, who became the wife of Hugh Percy, second duke of Northumberland [q. v.] (9) Augusta, who married Captain Andrew Corbett of the horse guards, and died on 5 Feb. 1778. (10) Caroline, who married, on 1 Jan. 1778, the Hon. John Dawson, afterwards first earl of Portarlington. (11) Louisa, the authoress of the introductory anecdotes prefixed to Lord Wharncliffe's edition of the ‘Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’ (1837), who died unmarried in August 1851, aged 94.
