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Francis Archibald Douglas, 1st Baron Kelhead


Francis Archibald Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig (3 February 1867 – 19 October 1894), also 1st Baron Kelhead in his own right, was a Scottish nobleman and Liberal politician.

Born at 8 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, London, Drumlanrig was the eldest son of John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, by his first wife Sibyl, daughter of Alfred Montgomery. As the heir apparent of the Marquess, he used the courtesy title Viscount Drumlanrig. He was educated at Harrow and at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and served as Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards from 1887 to 1893.

Drumlanrig later served as private secretary to the Liberal politician Lord Rosebery. Owing to Rosebery's patronage, on 22 June 1893 he was created Baron Kelhead, of Kelhead in the County of Dumfries, in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. This gave him his own seat in the House of Lords, unlike his father, whose titles were all in the Peerage of Scotland. In July 1893 he was appointed a Lord-in-Waiting by Rosebery.

Lord Queensberry had served in Parliament from 1872 to 1880 as a representative peer, but in 1880 he refused, as an atheist, to take the religious oath of allegiance to the Queen. He was not allowed to take his seat and was never again chosen as a representative peer by the Scottish nobles. Drumlanrig's accession to Parliament as the 1st Baron Kelhead precipitated a bitter dispute between him and Queensberry, and also between Queensberry and Rosebery, who became Prime Minister in 1894.


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