CAVENDISH SCOTT BENTINCK, William John, mq. of Titchfield (1800-1879).

Lord John Bentinck, as he was commonly styled, was educated privately at Welbeck and in Scotland with his younger brothers, whose passion for the chase he shared. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Portland mss PwH 347-51. Tall, handsome and an excellent horseman, with ‘no hint’ of his later eccentricity, he joined the 10th Hussars in 1818, but promotion eluded him and in September 1821, after much negotiation, he was transferred to the 7th Hussars with a lieutenancy for £350 and placed on the Irish half-pay as a captain for a further £1,100. Ibid. PwH 73-74, 78, 109, 110, 266, 347, 352-9, 430; Pw2H 33; Turberville, ii. 398. He rejected his uncle George Canning’s* offer to make him his joint personal private secretary at the foreign office with his brother George in September 1822. Ibid. PwH 446; Greville Mems. i. 133-5. In January 1823 he transferred to the Life Guards but, having become heir to the dukedom on the death of their elder brother Lord Titchfield, 5 Mar. 1824, he effected an exchange of commissions with George, in order to avoid active service. Portland mss PwL 241; TNA 30/29/9/5/25. Now styled Lord Titchfield, he replaced his late brother as their uncle Lord William Henry Cavendish Bentinck’s locum for King’s Lynn, where Lord William deputised for him at the election and undertook all constituency business. Gent. Mag. (1824), i. 367; Portland mss PwJe 77-122, 1077; J. Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck, 76. Titchfield, who was admitted to Brooks’s, 13 Feb. 1825, rarely attended the Commons, preferring to spend his time at Welbeck or hunting at Cottesmore with his uncle Lord William Frederick Cavendish Bentinck*, and ‘looking out for a wife’. Portland mss PwK 441; PwL 31-45; Add. 52017, Townshend to H.E. Fox, 25 Apr., 1 Aug. 1825. His only known votes were for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 10 May 1825. He made way for his uncle at the dissolution in June 1826. Bury and Norwich Post, 7 June 1826; Portland mss PwJe 118, 973-4. That September he helped to break the news of George’s enormous racing debts to their father. Portland mss PwH 358. He declined to be called to the Lords in August 1831 to help carry the reform bill. Wellington mss WP1/1192/25; TNA 30/29/9/5/25.

Titchfield travelled extensively on the continent, where he indulged his passion for opera. He shunned politics and suppressed his Peelite sympathies to avoid exposing his political differences with the Protectionist Lord George and their father, and he cited this in justification of his refusal to become involved in estate business in Portland’s lifetime. Portland mss PwH 374; Greville Mems. v. 152. He succeeded as 5th duke in 1854, but delayed taking his seat in the Lords until 5 June 1857, shortly before he called in the £25,000 which his father had lent Benjamin Disraeli† for the purchase of Hughenden. Turberville, ii. 403. The opera singer Adelaide Kemble, to whom he was devoted, had rejected him as a suitor, and he died childless and unmarried at his London home in Cavendish Square in December 1879. Physical illness, unexplained mental ‘absences’, a bizarre taste in architecture, his old fashioned dress and a passion for building tunnels and underground chambers had made him a legend in his own lifetime. The Times, 13 Dec. 1879. His brothers had predeceased him without issue, and the dukedom and entailed estates passed to Lieutenant-General William John Arthur Charles James Cavendish Bentinck, a grandson of the 3rd duke. W.J.A.C.J. Cavendish-Bentinck, Men, Women and Things, 30-33. As stipulated in his will, dated 21 Aug. 1857, his sisters Lady Ossington and Lady Howard de Walden and their heirs inherited his unentailed property as well as personal and household effects. His eccentricities lent credence to false litigious claims in 1896 that he had led a double life as a London draper Thomas Charles Druce (d. 1864). T. Besterman, The Druce-Portland Case.