Third Duke in Vanity Fair 1875

RICHARD PLANTAGENET CAMPBELL TEMPLE NUGENT BRYDGES CHANDOS GRENVILLE, Duke and Marquess of Buckingham and Chandos, Earl Temple, Viscount and Baron Cobham, Earl Nugent, and Lord Kinloss, was born to his names two-and-fifty years ago. A lineal descendant of a sister of Harry the Eighth, he might, had events taken a different course in times gone by have been on the throne, instead of which he found him­self the heir to a decayed and much encumbered property consisting mainly of titles and debts, and only allowed by them to possess himself and his future very partially. He was an honest-going man, however, and determined to earn a livelihood; so that after passing through Christ Church he became at twenty-three a Member of Parliament for Buckingham, and was as a matter of course preferred to be a Junior Lord of the Treasury in a short time. At thirty he even sought employment outside the circle which belonged of right to him, and became Chairman of the London and North-Western Railway, as which he showed considerable industry in mastering small details, and proved himself to be fitted by nature for a higher rank than the unhereditary one of a first-rate commercial administrator.

At thirty-eight he blossomed into the Dukedom, his advent to which enabled him to prove that he appreciated rightly the duties of a gentleman by paying his father's debts, which could not have been recovered from him by law; an act which was hailed with some contempt, as showing that he was far behind the commercial spirit of the age. In 1866 he was again taken back into Govern­ment, as the President of the Council, and the following year was made Secretary for the Colonies.