Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig

Born at 8 Chesterfield Street, Mayfair, London,{{cite book|title=The Complete Peerage, Volume X|year=1945|publisher=St Catherine's Press|page=707}} 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 College, Sandhurst and served as lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion of the Coldstream Guards, British Army, from June 1887, when he received his commission,{{London Gazette|issue=26060|page=3242|date=10 June 1890}} to 1893.{{cite book|title=Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, Volume 2|year=1999|publisher=Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd|page=2230|isbn=2-940085-02-1|edition=106th}}

Lord 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.{{London Gazette |issue=26415 |date=23 June 1893 |page=3570 }} 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.{{fact|date=March 2023}}

Lord Queensberry had served in Parliament from 1872 to 1880 as a Scottish 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.{{fact|date=March 2023}}

On 18 October 1894, sixteen months after his ennoblement, Drumlanrig died at Quantock Lodge, Somerset, at age 27, from injuries received during a shooting party. The inquest returned a verdict of "accidental death", but his death was also rumoured to be suicide or murder. He was buried in the family burial ground at Kinmount, Dumfriesshire, where his gravestone states he "was killed by the accidental discharge of his gun". He was unmarried and his younger brother Lord Percy Douglas became heir to his father's titles. It was speculated at the time, and evidence suggests,McKenna, Neil: "The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde" (2003) that Drumlanrig may have had a homosexual relationship with Rosebery. It has been further suggested that Queensberry had threatened to expose the Prime Minister's supposed proclivities if his government did not vigorously prosecute Oscar Wilde for Wilde's relationship with Drumlanrig's younger brother, Lord Alfred Douglas. Rosebery was, by most accounts, happily married until the death of his wife in 1890, though gossip that Rosebery was homosexual or bisexual was widespread. Queensberry believed, as he put it in a letter, that "Snob Queers like Rosebery" had corrupted his sons, and he held Rosebery indirectly responsible for Drumlanrig's death.{{note|Bosie}} Lord Queensberry to Alfred Montgomery, 1 November 1894. Quoted in {{Cite book|last=Murray

|first=Douglas|title=Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas|publisher=Hodder & Stoughton|year=2000|isbn=978-0-340-76770-2}}

• {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20080608044757/http://www.leighrayment.com/peers/peersK1.htm Data on the Barony of Kelhead]}}
• {{cite web|url=http://www.lexscripta.com/articles/wilde6.html|title=The Importance of Being Wilde Part VI: Why was Wilde Persecuted?|language=en|url-status=live|newspaper=Queensland Bar News|via=Lexscripta|date=December 2003|archive-date=September 25, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220925020024/http://www.lexscripta.com/articles/wilde6.html}}

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Category:1867 births

Category:1894 deaths

Category:Military personnel from the City of Westminster

Category:19th-century British Army personnel

Category:Graduates of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst

Category:Nobility from Dumfries and Galloway

Kelhead, Francis Douglas, 1st Baron

Category:People educated at Harrow School

Category:Heirs apparent who never acceded

Category:British courtesy viscounts

Category:Coldstream Guards officers

Category:Deaths by firearm in England

Category:Peers of the United Kingdom created by Queen Victoria