Charles Bruce, 3rd Earl of Ailesbury

Charles Bruce, 3rd Earl of Ailesbury and 4th Earl of Elgin (29 May 1682 – 10 February 1747), styled Viscount Bruce of Ampthill from 1685 to 1741, was a British peer.

Background

Bruce was the son of Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury and Lady Elizabeth Seymour, daughter of Henry Seymour, Lord Beauchamp and Mary Capell.^[1]

Public life

Bruce was returned to Parliament for Great Bedwyn in 1705, a seat he held until 1710, when he was returned for both Great Bedwyn and Marlborough and chose to sit for the latter. In December 1711 he was summoned to the House of Lords through a writ of acceleration in his father's junior title Baron Bruce of Whorlton. In 1741 he succeeded his father in the earldoms of Elgin and Ailesbury. With his two sons having predeceased him, he was in 1746 created Baron Bruce, of Tottenham in the County of Wilts, with a special remainder to his nephew the Honourable Thomas Brudenell.^[2]

Family

Lord Ailesbury married, firstly, Lady Anne Savile,^[3] daughter of William Savile, 2nd Marquess of Halifax. They had four children:

• Hon. Robert Bruce (d. 30 August 1738), married Frances Blackett (d. 16 July 1750), daughter of Sir William Blackett, 1st Baronet, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, without issue.
• Hon. George Bruce (born before 1717).
• Lady Mary Bruce (1710 – 14 August 1738), married (1728) Henry Brydges, 2nd Duke of Chandos and had issue.^[3]
• Lady Elizabeth Bruce, married (1732) the Honourable Benjamin Bathurst, son of Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl Bathurst, without issue.

Juliana Boyle, Countess of Ailesbury (d. 1739) (Jonathan Richardson)

After his first wife's death in July 1717, Lord Ailesbury married, secondly, Lady Juliana Boyle, daughter of Charles Boyle, 2nd Earl of Burlington.^[3] They had no children. After her death in March 1739 he married, thirdly, aged 47, the 18-year-old Lady Caroline Campbell, daughter of John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll, in 1739. They had one daughter:

• Lady Mary Bruce (d. 5 November 1796), married (1757) Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke of Richmond, without issue.

Because neither of his sons survived him or left issue, upon his death, the earldom of Elgin and subsidiary Scottish peerages was inherited by his cousin the Earl of Kincardine, while the earldom of Ailesbury and subsidiary English peerages became extinct. The barony of Bruce of Tottenham created for him in 1746 passed upon his death the next year according to the special remainder to his nephew Thomas Brudenell. His Scottish lordship of Kinloss was subsequently determined to have devolved upon James Brydges, 3rd Duke of Chandos, who, however, did not claim the title. The Countess of Ailesbury and Elgin married as her second husband Henry Seymour Conway, by whom she had the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer. She died in January 1803, aged 82.

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