Melville Henry Massue

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Melville Henry Massue
Massue in 1911
Born(1868-04-26)26 April 1868
Fulham, Middlesex, England
Died6 October 1921(1921-10-06) (aged 53)
Southwark, London, England

Melville Amadeus Henry Douglas Heddle de la Caillemotte de Massue de Ruvigny[1] (26 April 1868 – 6 October 1921) was a British genealogist and author who was twice president of the Legitimist Jacobite League of Great Britain and Ireland. He styled himself the Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval.[2]

Biography[edit]

The Marquise de Ruvigny

Massue was descended from a sister of Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, a Huguenot aristocrat who emigrated to England in 1688 and became a prominent supporter of William of Orange.[3] He was born in London to Colonel Charles Henry Theodore Bruce de Ruvignes and Margaret Melville Moodie, the daughter of a Scottish laird.[4] He succeeded his father as 9th Marquis of Ruvigny and 15th Marquis of Raineval in 1883,[1] though his right to these titles was disputed by the authors of The Complete Peerage.[5] In 1893, he married Rose Amalia Gaminara, with whom he had three children.[4]

Massue was an early member of the Jacobite Order of the White Rose, though he found the sentimental nature of the order restrictive.[6] In 1891, he co-founded the Legitimist Jacobite League with Herbert Vivian and Ruaraidh Erskine as a more political and radical Jacobite society.[7] He served as president from 1893–94 and again from 1897–99.[2] The league was one of the principal organizations driving the Neo-Jacobite Revival of the 1890s. In 1898, he was made a knight of the Order of Charles III by the Duke of Madrid, the Carlist claimant to the throne of Spain.

Massue was a prolific author of genealogical works and a committed member of the Roman Catholic Church, which he joined in 1902.[8] He died in a London nursing home and was succeeded by his second son, Charles, "Comte de la Caillemotte", his first son having died unexpectedly shortly before the First World War.[9]

Publications[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Massue 1909, p. 10.
  2. ^ a b "Ruvigny and Raineval, 9th Marquis of". Who's Who & Who Was Who. Oxford University Press. 2007.
  3. ^ Massue 1909, pp. 118–120.
  4. ^ a b Massue, Melville Henry (1906). The Moodie Book. Privately printed. pp. 98–99.
  5. ^ Cokayne, G. E. (1926). Gibbs, Vicary; Doubleday, H. A. (eds.). The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant. Vol. 5 (2nd ed.). London: St Catherine Press. p. 613.
  6. ^ Guthrie, Neil (12 December 2013). The Material Culture of the Jacobites. Cambridge University Press. p. 155. ISBN 978-1-107-04133-2.
  7. ^ Gardner, Laurence (31 March 2007). The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed. Weiser Books.
  8. ^ Addison, Henry Robert; et al., eds. (1903). Who's Who. London: A. & C. Black.
  9. ^ The Times dated 7 October 1921, p. 9, col. C.
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