I am not certain of the exact amount of money which Lady Alice Montagu Douglas Scott brought into her marriage to Harry Gloucester, but based on the data that estimates that the Buccleuch family is presently valued at around 720,000,000 pounds of which the Alice's nephew, the 9th Duke held just under half, it is safe to say that the Buccleuchs were far better placed to provide for their daughter than Prince and Princess Nicholas were. I believe that when the King of Greece was receiving a paltry privy purse annuity of 52,000 pounds pa in 1905, Lady Alice's father was receiving about 232,000 pounds gross from his landed interests alone. The Buccleuch holdings have contracted by nearly a half since the 1880s yet they still remain one of Europe's largest private landowning dynasty to this day.
It is also useful to know that apart from Drumlanrig Castle the Buccleuchs still own a Palace near Edinburgh (presently leased to the University of Wisconsin), a 100 room mansion in the borders and another mansion in Northamptonshire. I was also under the impression that Barnwell was actually given to Alice and Harry along with its estate as a wedding present. It was generally the custom in bygone days for aristocrats to settle amounts on younger children either out of capital or raised in the form of charges against family property. Generally sons received an annuity such as that received by Lord Randolph Churchill, who had about 1,500 a year from his relatively 'hard up' father. Daughters generally received the interest from lump sums placed into trusts. The amount of such a trust was often relative to the status of her father. For example a Duke may have been expected to provide his daughters with trusts of at least 15,000 pounds to 20,000 pounds, Marquesses a little less, Earls less still and so on! In the case of the Buccleuchs, the hazards of having lots of children obviously would put pressure on family finances. Death duties would have been a problem too, but like many landed dynasties of the period, the hub of the Buccleuch estates and their assets, had already been transferred to ownership of a limited company, set up in 1923 to specifically avoid the horrific consequence of death duties. It was nevertheless a simple procedure to issue dividend bearing shares for life to younger children at the discretion of the board of such limited companies. This proved a favoured method of providing for younger children when taking out mortgages against family owned assets in the hands of trustees, in order to do likewise proved unnecessary and cumbersome to effect.
I thought that the establishment of the Buccleuch Estates Company in 1923 went some way to protect such assets and generally duties were tolerable and payable on 'personal' estates by successive Dukes. As an idea of 'personal' estate valued at the time of probate examples may prove useful to see how wealthy the Buccleuchs were and remain. In 1884 the personal estate of the 5th Duke of Buccleuch and excluding all 'entailed' property was valued at 910,000 pounds and that of the 9th Duke proved in 2004 valued his personal estate at 320,000,000 pounds and did not include a further 400,000,000 pounds worth of assets held by various trusts under the umbrella of the Buccleuch Group. The Leonardo stolen from Drumlanrig and since recovered, is valued at 50,000,000 pounds alone, though heaven knows how much it would realize if it ever came up for auction.
All this is quite fascinating when compared to the relative 'small fry' financial status of Marina's parents. Even when the Greek monarchy was restored under George II, I hardly think Prince Nicholas' fortune could ever have come anywhere near that of Alice Gloucester's family! As an aside I could provide oodles of data on the Buccleuchs on the 'Dukes of the realms...' topic thread on the '
The World and their Culture' thread if there is enough interest?
Marina's penniless parents had 'little' in the way of settlement to offer Marina when she married, unlike the Buclleuchs, who could have given her sister in law Alice 100,000 pounds down
. I do not think the Family of the Duchess of Gloucester were as flush as you think.The Duchess was one of seven ....her 4 sisters also had to be provided for and much of the familie immense wealth was tied up in estates and art.
The premature death of the Duchesses father meant that a settement/trust to save the families wealth from heavy death duties fell through and great sales had to be made.
