by Susan Flantzer © Unofficial Royalty 2014
Photo Credit – Wikipedia
Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife, was the husband of Princess Louise, Princess Royal who was the eldest daughter of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. Alexander William George Duff was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on November 10, 1849. He was the only son of James Duff, 5th Earl Fife and Lady Agnes Hay, daughter of William Hay, 18th Earl of Erroll and Lady Elizabeth FitzClarence who was one of the ten children of King William IV and his mistress Dorothea Jordan. When Duff’s father became 5th Earl Fife in 1857, he was able to use the courtesy title Viscount Macduff, and Macduff became his nickname. Duff was educated at Eton College.
Duff had five sisters:
- Lady Anne Duff (1847 – 1925), married John Townshend, 5th Marquess Townshend, had issue
- Lady Ida Duff (died 1918), married (1) Adrian Hope, had issue (2) William Wilson, no issue
- Lady Alexina Duff (1851 – 1882), married Henry Coventry, no issue
- Lady Agnes Duff (1852 – 1925), married (1) George Hay-Drummond, no issue (2) Herbert Flower, no issue (3) Alfred Cooper, had issue; David Cameron, the former British prime minister, is a descendant of this third marriage
- Lady Mary Duff (born and died 1854)
In 1874, Duff was elected to Parliament as a Liberal Party member for the Scottish constituency Elginshire and Nairnshire. He remained in Parliament until his father’s death in 1879 when he became the 6th Earl Fife and then had a seat in the House of Lords. In the House of Lords, Duff served as the Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms. He was
Lord-Lieutenant of Elginshire from 1872 – 1902 and one of the founders of the Chartered Company of South Africa.
On July 27, 1889, in the Private Chapel of Buckingham Palace, Duff married Princess Louise, eldest daughter of the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII). Louise and Alexander were third cousins via their mutual descent from King George III. Alexander’s descent was via the future King William IV’s long-time relationship with actress Dorothea Jordan by whom he had ten children who married into the British aristocracy. As with the marriage of Princess Louise’s aunt, another Princess Louise who married the 9th Duke of Argyll, there were grumblings about a member of the royal family marrying into the British aristocracy. However, Queen Victoria approved of the marriage. Two days after the wedding, Queen Victoria created the groom Duke of Fife and Marquess of Macduff in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. Despite the seventeen-year age difference, the couple was well-matched and settled down to a life of country pursuits with the Duke managing his Scottish estates and Louise becoming an expert at salmon fishing.
Photo Credit – Alexander William George Duff, 1st Duke of Fife; Princess Louise Victoria Alexandra Dagmar, Duchess of Fife by William Downey, for W. & D. Downey. albumen cabinet card, 27 July 1889, NPG x3805. © National Portrait Gallery, London
The couple had three children:
- Alastair Duff, Marquess of Macduff, stillborn 1890
- Alexandra, 2nd Duchess of Fife (1891 – 1959), married her first cousin once removed, Prince Arthur of Connaught; had issue
- Maud (1893 – 1945), married Charles Carnegie, 11th Earl of Southesk, had issue
Duke and Duchess of Fife with their daughters; Photo Credit – Wikipedia
In 1900, when it became apparent that the Duke and Duchess of Fife were unlikely to have a son to inherit the title, Queen Victoria issued the Duke of Fife a new Letters Patent as Duke of Fife and Earl of Macduff in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. This Letters Patent gave the second dukedom of Fife a special remainder that allowed the dukedom to pass to the daughters of the 1st Duke of Fife if he had no son, and then to the male heirs of his daughters.
In December 1911, the Duke and Duchess of Fife and their two daughters set off to spend the winter in Egypt and Sudan where the climate was more beneficial to Louise’s health. Their ship went aground near Morocco and then their lifeboat sank. The family was rescued, but the Duke of Fife later developed pneumonia and died in Aswan, Egypt on January 29, 1912. The Duke of Fife was buried at the Private Chapel, Mar Lodge Mausoleum in Braemar, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Grave of the Duke of Fife; Photo Credit – www.findagrave.com
The Duke’s elder daughter Alexandra succeeded to the 1900 Dukedom, becoming the 2nd Duchess of Fife and Countess of Macduff in her own right. Her father’s other titles, including the 1889 Dukedom, became extinct. Alexandra’s only son predeceased her, so upon her death, Maud’s son James Carnegie became the 3rd Duke of Fife.
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