Henry Scott, Third Duke of Buccleuch

Henry Scott, Third Duke of Buccleuch

By Tim Hurlocker

Henry Scott, Third Duke of Buccleuch tells the true story of an entitled young Scot who learns tough lessons in life and love as he travels through France with his famous tutor, the Scottish philosopher Adam Smith.

At seventeen, Henry Scott was a boy who had it all - wealth, title, and servants to attend to his every desire. After graduating Eton, his ambitious stepfather, the British politician Charles Townshend, hired Smith to be Henry's personal teacher while they toured France in the mid-1760s. The plan was for Henry to gain Continental refinement, sow his wild oats, return to England, choose a wife, inherit his vast Scottish estates, and then stand for Parliament. Who could ask for more?

Yet as Henry completes his privileged education, he realizes that money can't buy love and happiness, lofty titles imply great responsibilities, and that death strikes rich and poor alike. His noble title assured a life of ease, but also decided who he could marry, who his sister could marry, and that his younger brother was slated for the military. As the date of his Majority nears, Henry must choose between the dueling influences of his scheming stepfather and his famous teacher over his estate, his marriage, and the future of Scotland.

Along the way, Henry and Adam encounter the luminaries of eighteenth-century France and England, including David Hume, Voltaire, Rousseau, Shelburne, Burke, and Ben Franklin, the American Representative in London. Henry met the kings of both France and England before he turned 21 but discovered that humble servants had the greater impact on his life. His education charts the birth of the modern liberal order that presaged the American and French Revolutions. Henry Scott is the dramatization of a true story; it reads like a novel and contains essential lessons for us all.