John Hope, 1st Marquess of Linlithgow

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John Hope, 1st Marquess of Linlithgow : biography

25 September 1860 – 29 February 1908

John Adrian Louis Hope, 1st Marquess of Linlithgow KT, GCMG, GCVO, PC (25 September 186029 February 1908), also known as Viscount Aithrie before 1873 and as The 7th Earl of Hopetoun between 1873 and 1902, was a Scottish aristocrat, politician and colonial administrator. He is best known for his brief and controversial tenure as the first Governor-General of Australia. When he became Governor-General, he was 40 years old and he remains the youngest person to have held that office; he is also the shortest-lived, dying at the age of 47. In Australia he is remembered as Lord Hopetoun.

Early life and career

Hope was born at South Queensferry, West Lothian in Scotland the eldest son of the 6th Earl of Hopetoun and Ethelred Anne Hope. He was educated at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where he passed in 1879 but did not join the Army on graduation. He later explained ‘the affairs of the family estate, to which I succeeded at 13, seemed to call for my personal attention’. Subsequently he devoted his attentions to managing the more than seventeen thousand hectares of family estate located around the Firth of Forth.

He married, in London on 18 October 1886, girl-next-door Hersey Alice Eveleigh-de Moleyns (formerly Mullins), a Scots-born Irish aristocrat (daughter of the 4th Baron Ventry) then aged 19. They would have three surviving children. Their elder son Victor would become Viceroy and Governor-General of India 1936–43, after having declined the governorship of Madras and the governor-generalship of Australia.

In 1883, Hope became Conservative whip in the House of Lords and served as a Lord in Waiting to Queen Victoria from June 1885 to January 1886 and August 1886 to August 1889. In 1889 he was also appointed Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Governor of Victoria

In 1889 he was appointed Governor of Victoria, where he served until 1895. His appointment came amidst a general stylistic change in colonial governors. Reflecting "Britain’s more flamboyant pride in Empire, Australian colonial governors began to display a new colour and ostentation". Increased interest in Empire had spurred the appearance of young and wealthy aristocrats in place of previous career administrators.

Hopetoun’s time as Governor was in keeping with the newly emerging style. He rapidly developed a reputation for lavish entertaining and spectacular vice-regal galas. Notwithstanding poor health and colonial astonishment at his habit of wearing hair-powder, his youthful enthusiasm for routine duties and his fondness for informal horseback tours won him many friends.

Hopetoun’s term coincided with a number of serious difficulties being faced by the colonies. The economic boom in the colony was reversed by the Great Crash in 1891, leading to a decade of depression, bank failures, industrial action and political instability. In contrast to the troubles faced during this period by other colonial governors, Hopetoun by most accounts handled this period ably and subsequently stayed in office for longer than the usual term. However the reality of the 1890s was that colonial governors had lost much of their administrative and political power, instead assuming more figurative and representative roles.

Hopetoun’s term also coincided with the important years of the federation movement in Victoria. The economic crash and resultant political and social problems laid bare the inefficiencies of the colonial system and sparked renewed interest in an Australian federation. Hopetoun was an active supporter of the movement, appearing at numerous banquets and giving speeches in its favour. At one such banquet he even offered to return to Australia as their first governor-general should Federation be implemented. Upon leaving the governorship and returning to the United Kingdom in 1895, Hopetoun was a widely popular figure in Victoria and New South Wales.

Later life

Though he greatly desired appointment to the Viceroyalty of India, Linlithgow was prevented from attaining the position by poor health and adverse political developments, though his son Victor, the 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow, would eventually assume this role (after rejecting the post of Australian Governor-General in 1935) from 1936 to 1943. His grandson Lord Glendevon married the daughter of the English novelist W. Somerset Maugham.