So when can we expect Harry and Meghan on the Clyde?
The Royal newlyweds will be known as the Duke and Duchess of Dumbarton north of the Border...a title last used in the 17th century. So will a little bit of the Markle sparkle rub off on the town?
AMID the excitement of the big day, the ‘is that really Oprah Winfrey?’ celebrity spots, the ooh-ing and aahing over the dress and that sermon, it was an easy detail to miss. But along with the dukedom of Sussex, the adoration of millions and an unlikely friendship with George and Amal Clooney, Prince Harry and his new bride Meghan Markle received something else on their wedding day: the earldom of Dumbarton.
It is a title that has prompted a fair amount of eyebrow-raising north of the Border. For if the new Countess of Dumbarton is envisaging her husband’s Scottish earldom nestling in a misty glen, surrounded by pretty whitewashed cottages and populated with rosy-cheeked highlanders, she is in for a bit of a shock.
Dumbarton – a town on the Clyde coast usually untroubled by royal concerns – is a world away from the clipped hedgerows and sprawling million-pound houses of the Royal couple’s wedding venue, Windsor.
This is, after all, a town where the flower beds in a popular park have recently been turfed over as part of council budget cuts and the high street is a confusing hodgepodge of charity shops, vaping stores and To Let signs. It is a far cry from the designer stores and well-heeled residents of Kensington.
Yet it is likely that the Earl and Countess of Dumbarton will, at some point, visit the town they are now interlinked with, if only by name.
The Earl and Countess of Strathearn, as the Cambridges are known in Scotland, graced the bucolic Perthshire town of Crieff – smack in the middle of Strathearn – with their presence in 2014, spending time at a community campus, a local park and the Famous Grouse distillery.
There they sipped whisky, met representatives from the local air ambulance and children from the town’s schools, while the Countess of Strathearn wore a Scottish designer number – a £1,990 coat by Jonathan Saunders.
COULD such a lavish reception happen in Dumbarton? Local MSP Jackie Baillie was certainly enthusiastic, tweeting that the town was ‘very much looking forward to a visit!’ as she thought it had ‘the real potential to be a real economic boost to the town, particularly with the opportunity to increase tourism’.
Her followers were doubtful. ‘What are the odds that he won’t come near the place or hasn’t a clue where it is?’ asked one. ‘Tokenism at its worst,’ wrote another. ‘There are many things that could be a boost to Dumbarton and this isn’t one of them,’ moaned a third. Oh dear. So why then, was such a curious title bestowed upon the young royal couple? Perhaps it is hoped that the pair, with the Duchess’s Hollywood glamour and the Duke’s easy manner, will bring some much-needed pizazz to the area. Or perhaps it is simply because when it comes to the deeply confusing and ancient tradition of royal titles, it was seen as the least controversial option on offer. ‘The gift of a Scottish title upon marriage, in addition to English and Irish ones, follows royal precedence for the sons of the monarch and future monarch,’ says one editor of the forthcoming edition of Debrett’s Peerage & Baronetage.
Indeed all senior Royals have a Scottish title, as well as their more commonly used English one, with Prince Charles and Camilla known as the Duke of Duchess of Rothesay when they cross the Border.
How such titles are decided, however, is a distinctly murky business. The Queen, as one might imagine, gets the final say and the title is conferred directly by her. If the couple are involved themselves in the choice, however, the Palace aren’t saying.
Until the wedding it was another earldom entirely, the Earl and Countess of Ross, which was considered the bookies favourite and a shoo-in for Harry and Meghan.
The Royal Family has a tradition of giving the earldom of Ross to second sons, and other Royals who were bestowed the title include James III, James Stewart, and the second surviving son of James IV, Alexander Stewart.
Debrett’s, which had previously touted the title as a possibility, is cautious about speculating on why it didn’t make the cut.
‘Without knowing which specific factors were used when choosing the title for Prince Harry it is not possible to know why another title was rejected,’ one royal expert says.
But it is perhaps important to note that the earldom was last held by Charles I, who despite being monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland was nevertheless tried, convicted and executed for high treason in 1649 after his defeat in the English Civil War.
It saw him surrender to a Scottish force who eventually handed him over to the English Parliament – hardly the sort of legacy one would want for a thoroughly modern, thoroughly British member of the Royal Family and his mixed-race American wife.
The Earl of Dumbarton then, must have seemed like a relatively safe choice, having only ever been used twice in history.
‘Prince Harry is the third Earl of Dumbarton,’ says Debrett’s. ‘This title has not been used for 269 years. The first Earl of Dumbarton was the younger son of the first Marquess of Douglas, George Douglas, who was given the title by Charles II in recognition of his military service in 1675.’
It, too, is not without controversy, given that the title comes from an old Jacobite family with strong Catholic, and Scottish ties. Yet there are intriguing parallels between the first earl and the current one.
George Douglas was, first and foremost, a soldier, much like Prince Harry, who has seen action in Afghanistan with the British Army and subsequently set up the Invictus Games for wounded servicemen and women.
DOUGLAS was born into a noble Jacobean family in 1635 and was made Colonel of the ‘Regiment de Douglas’, a Scottish soldier unit that fought for King Louis XIV, when he was only 18 years old. His father sired a whopping 16 children in all, three with his first wife, Margaret Hamilton, who died young, and 13 with his second wife Lady Mary Gordon. Douglas was the second child from his second marriage.
A committed Catholic, he spent much of his early soldiering years in France, before being transferred to England during the AngloDutch war. He even pops up in the diaries of Samuel Pepys, who records meeting him in Kent, where his regiment was stationed and where he was waiting to meet the Duke of York.
Although Pepys does not record his views on Douglas himself he does note that ‘most of the Scotch gentry, as I observe, [are] of few words’.
Prince Harry, who himself found social interactions, particularly in public, difficult as a young man, might well sympathise.
Douglas’s wife, Anne, also came with a whiff of scandal. She was the sister of the Duchess of Northumberland, whose husband was the youngest illegitimate son of King Charles II.
In 1675, after serving in innumerable European wars on the sides of the English, Douglas was given the title of the Earl of Dumbarton by Charles II as a reward for his tireless service.
But his Catholicism worked against him in the heady climate of the late 17th century, and just
three years later he was barred from military service (not to mention all the lucrative benefits that went with it) thanks to the Test Act of 1678, which penalised Catholics and anyone else who did not take communion in the Church of England. By then, however, he had returned home, where he was appointed military commander of Scotland by the newly ascended James VII and became one of his closest aides and confidants, even following him into exile in France. He died shortly afterwards, at Saint-Germainen-Laye near Paris in 1692 and was buried in the abbey there. The title was passed to his son. In contrast, little is known about the second earl, also called George. He grew up in exile in France, spent most of his life abroad and after the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 lived in Russia. He had no children, and the title passed out of existence following his death. Until, that is, last month. By contrast, the earldom of Strathearn, conferred upon Prince William when he married Kate Middleton in 2011, has been in almost constant use since its creation in 1115. The most recent was the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn – Prince Victoria’s third son, Arthur, who died in 1944.
And the title does, at least, have a personal connection for the couple. Strathearn is but a short drive from St Andrews, where Kate and William met ten years before their wedding, as students of the University of St Andrews. The pair might have passed through Strathearn en route to Balmoral, where they spent many weekends during their student days.
THAT Harry and Meghan have a similar personal connection to Dumbarton is doubtful. The pair apparently first met on a blind date in London private members’ club Soho House. It’s unlikely that a branch will be opening in Dumbarton any time soon.
Not that Dumbarton itself is not without history. Its castle, perched on a volcanic rock overlooking the Clyde, has the longest recorded history of any in Scotland, and archaeologists believe there has been some sort of structure here since the Iron Age.
Viewed by the Romans as the ‘fort of the Britons’ it has long held strategic importance, and everyone from Merlin to Mary Queen of Scots to William Wallace is believed to have spent time here. The existing medieval structure was built around 1220 by Alexander II of Scotland and the town served as the capital of a kingdom now known as Strathclyde, its most important role a fortress to fend off the Vikings who ruled in the Hebrides and the islands of the Clyde.
It is also perhaps intriguing to note that Prince Harry’s primary title, the Duke of Sussex, also carries a whiff of controversy.
Sussex (there was only one) was married twice, but neither of his wives was seen as suitably blueblooded – an accusation that mercifully no longer matters (although could also be made about American Meghan Markle) but at the time meant his children were illegitimate, hence the swift termination of the title.
Historian Andrew Roberts described Sussex as ‘a bit of a ne’er-do-well, getting married twice without the Royal Marriages Act being triggered’.
It seems that Prince Harry might have more in common with the man who once held his Scottish title than his English one after all.
And perhaps Dumbarton will benefit from the royal accolade. This week the local paper, the Dumbarton and Vale of Leven Reporter, eagerly disclosed that the town’s first post-wedding tourists had arrived.
Michelle and Graham Black, a couple from Australia, popped into Dumbarton on their way from Glasgow after becoming intrigued when they heard about it through the royal wedding. After taking in the sights they proclaimed Dumbarton ‘nice’.
Well, it’s a start.