Thomas Bruce, 1st Earl of Elgin

Thomas Bruce (1599–1663) was a Scottish nobleman, third Lord Bruce of Kinloss, and first Earl of Elgin.

Early life

Born in Edinburgh in 1599, Thomas Bruce was the second son of Edward Bruce, 1st Lord Kinloss and his wife, Magdalene Clerk.

He succeeded to the title of 3rd Baron Bruce of Kinlosse in August 1613, aged 13, on the death of his elder brother, Edward, killed in a duel with Edward Sackville. The family estates included Whorlton Castle and manor given to his father by James I in 1603. James I granted custody of Thomas, and the estates, to his mother, Magdalene, until he came of age.

Marriage

On 4 July 1622 Thomas married Anne Chichester, daughter by his first marriage of Sir Robert Chichester (1578-1627) of Raleigh, Devonshire, and half-sister of Sir John Chichester, 1st Baronet, of Raleigh (1623-1667).

In 1624 James I granted Bruce Houghton House, near Ampthill, Bedfordshire. Designed by Inigo Jones and built for Mary Sidney Herbert, Dowager Countess of Pembroke it had been reverted to the King by Mary's brother two years after her death in 1621. It became the Bruce family's principal residence for over a century. Charles I later granted him nearby Houghton Park to preserve game for the royal hunt but persistent hunting and hawking by the local Conquest family forced Charles' subsequent intervention.

Anne bore him his only son and heir, Robert, on 19 Mar 1626/27 but she died, the next day, on 20 March 1626/27.

Remarriage

12 November 1629 Bruce remarried Lady Diana Cecil, daughter of William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Exeter, widow of Henry de Vere, 18th Earl of Oxford. Diana, having married Oxford in 1624, just a year before his death, brought with her considerable estates at West Tanfield and Manfield, near Thomas' existing Yorkshire estates, as well as property in Lincolnshire and Middlesex including Clerkenwell Priory.

New titles

During Charles I's period of Personal rule, Bruce maintained close relations with the court. He attended the King for his coronation in Scotland in 1633 and the title, Earl of Elgin, was created for him on 21 June 1633.

The year after performing in Thomas Carew's masque, Coelum Britannicum, he graduated Master of Arts from the University of Oxford in 1636. Bruce was invested as a Knight in 1638 at Windsor, along with William Villiers and the Prince of Wales.

Bruce continued in royal favour. He was created Baron Bruce of Whorlton, York, in the Peerage of England, on 29 July 1641. In 1643 he was appointed "Keeper of the King's Park" at Byfleet, a role he held until 1647.

The English Civil War

Although Bruce's sister Christian Cavendish, Countess of Devonshire was a notable Royalist, Bruce himself took the side of the Parliamentarians, serving on several county committees from 1644 to Pride’s Purge.

Shortly before the 1648 outbreak of the Second English Civil War, fellow scot, William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart, whipping boy of Charles I and husband of his relative, Catherine Bruce, appointed Bruce as principal trustee of Ham House to act on behalf of his wife, Catherine, and their daughters. The move was successful in helping protect Murray's ownership of the estate by making sequestration by the Parliamentarians both more difficult and, given Elgin's influential position with the Scottish Presbyterians, politically undesirable.

Bruce was later described by Sir Philip Warwick as 'a Gentleman of a very good understanding, and of a pious, but timorous and cautious mind'. He recounted how Bruce expressed some uneasy regret for his actions, that he had tried to avoid parliament when he could and denied having been one of the handful of lords that condemned Archbishop Laud to death.

Death

Bruce's second wife, Diana Cecil, died on 26 February 1658 without issue.

Thomas Bruce died on 21 December 1663 at the age of 64. His son, Robert, inherited the estates and titles in December 1663.