Marquess of Tweeddale
(1787-1876)
30 April 1861

Volume 3, page 167, sitting number 3360.

The Scottish soldier and administrator George Hay was born at Bonnington in Angus on 1 February 1787 and educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh. He succeeded as 8th Marquess Tweeddale in 1804, when his father died while imprisoned in France during the Napoleonic Wars.

A professional soldier, he fought in the Anglo-American War of 1812 as a Lieutenant-Colonel of the 100th Regiment of Foot. He eventually rose to the rank of Field Marshal and served as Governor of Madras in India. In 1820 he was admitted to the Order of the Thistle.

On 28 March 1816 Lord Tweeddale married Lady Susan Montagu, a younger daughter of the 5th Duke of Manchester. They had fourteen children.

When the census was taken in 1861 the couple were lviing at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire with a staff of 68 servants, including 7 lady's maids, 8 footmen, 11 musicians, a lamplighter and a 'lamplighter's assistant.'

Lord Tweeddale died at Yester in Scotland on 10 October 1876.

A short obituary appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette (10 October 1876). 'We learn by telegram that Lord Tweeddale died this morning at a quarter-past nine at Yester House, his seat in Haddingtonshire. The deceased peer (who was the eighth marquis) was eighty-nine years old, having been born in 1787. He was a representative peer of Scotland, and had been lord lieutenant of Haddingtonshire since 1823. He served in the army of India and in the Peninsula, receiving the rank of general in 1854, and that of field-marshal in 1875.'