Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Maule, William Ramsay

1404708Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 37 — Maule, William Ramsay1894John Andrew Hamilton

MAULE, WILLIAM RAMSAY, Lord Panmure of Brechin and Navar, Forfarshire, (1771–1852), second son of George Ramsay, eighth earl of Dalhousie, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Andrew Glen, and niece and heiress of James Glen of Longcroft, Stirlingshire, was born on 27 Oct. 1771. His father's maternal uncle, General William Maule of Kelly, created Earl of Panmure in the Irish peerage in 1743 [cf. Maule, Patrick, and Maule, James], died unmarried in 1782, and left his property to his nephew, the eighth Earl of Dalhousie, with remainder to Dalhousie's second son, William. Dalhousie died in 1787, when William succeeded to the estates of Panmure and adopted the name of Maule. In 1789 he purchased a cornetcy in the 11th dragoons, and afterwards raised an independent company of foot, which was disbanded in 1791. On 25 April 1796 he was elected M.P. for the county of Forfar, but at another election later in the year was defeated by Sir David Carnegie, on whose death he was again elected, in June 1805, and continued to hold his seat during eight following parliaments, and until he was called to the House of Lords. He was throughout a steady adherent of Fox, whose personal friend he was, and a supporter of the whig party. On 9 Sept. 1831 he was raised to the peerage of Great Britain, with the title of Baron Panmure. As a young man he was devoted to the turf, and many of his practical jokes at race meetings were long recounted in Scotland. He had been one of the most dissipated and extravagant, even of the Scottish gentry of his younger days, and survived them, thanks to a constitution of extraordinary strength and a fortune of vast resources. He preserved late into this century the habits and passions—scandalous and unconcealed—which had, except in his case, passed away with the last. He was devoted to his friends so long as they remained complaisant, and violent and implacable to all who thwarted him. His uncontrollable temper alienated him from nearly all his family in his latter years, yet he performed many unostentatious acts of charity. In politics he was a liberal, and his views were invariably humane; in private life he was an immovable despot. He died at Brechin Castle, Forfarshire, 13 April 1852. He married, on 1 Dec. 1794, Patricia Heron (d. 11 May 1821), daughter of Gilbert Gordon of Halleaths, by whom he had three sons and seven daughters. The eldest son and heir, Fox Maule, became eleventh earl of Dalhousie [see Maule, Fox]. Panmure's second wife, whom he married in 1822, was Miss Elizabeth Barton, by whom he had no issue.

[Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; Gent. Mag. 1852, i. 515; Daily News, 16 April 1852; Annual Register, 1852; Sir C. E. Adam's Political State of Scotland in the Eighteenth Cent. p. 147; Times, 16 April 1852.]

J. A. H.