Historical records matching Mollie Butler, Baroness Butler of Saffron Walden
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About Mollie Butler, Baroness Butler of Saffron Walden
Mollie Courtauld survived her husband and enjoyed a second marriage to Conservative Home Secretary Rab Butler from 1959 until Rab's death in 1982. Mollie Courtauld (by then, Mollie Butler) died on 18 February 2009 at the age of 101.
Mollie Butler was the second wife of the highly distinguished "wet" Tory politician of the 1950s and early 1960s, Richard Austin Butler, known to all as "Rab". Mollie was, understandably, his staunchest supporter and never forgave Harold Macmillan for allowing Alec Douglas-Home, instead of her "beloved Rab", to succeed him in 1963 as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative party. Lady Longford was to describe him, somewhat gushingly, as "the best Prime Minister we never had".
Mollie Montgomerie was born in 1907, the eldest daughter of Frank and Esme Montgomerie. Her father was a gentleman farmer and owner of Great Codham Hall in Essex. Both parents were descended from lowland Scottish families. "Money was never plentiful in our house", Mollie was later to recall in her memoirs, August & Rab. Her childhood years were spent partly in the Essex countryside, which she always adored, and partly in Wimbledon, where she went to school with her younger sister, Pam. The school was very near to the Common and was run by two able and efficient old ladies called Miss Farman and Miss Carter. Because of them, she grew up with a reasonable knowledge of Latin and a lifelong love of English literature.
One of her father's neighbours in the Essex countryside was August Courtauld. The Courtaulds, wealthy textile manufacturers, were descended from Huguenots who had settled in England in 1685. Montgomerie met Courtauld, who was three years her senior, through his sister, Betty. August, freed from the necessity of working because of his family's wealth, spent most of his life as a yachtsman and Arctic explorer, pursuits in which Mollie sometimes joined him.
In 1930 Montgomerie and Courtauld became engaged and they were married, in Southwark Cathedral, in 1932. The first part of their honeymoon was spent in the Sudan. As they arrived at Dover for the night boat across the Channel, a ticket collector said to August: "I hope you won't be taking the lady to the Arctic, sir!" During their married life, Mollie accompanied August on several expeditions, becoming one of the first women to visit eastern Greenland. When in England, they lived in a large Georgian house called Spencers, near Great Yeldham, in Essex, where Mollie was to live right up until her death. She took great pride in the house, which she opened yearly to visiting members of the Georgian Group. August and Mollie had six children, two of whom were raised by her alone during the Second World War, while August was serving in Naval Intelligence. In the autumn of 1953, August started to show signs of multiple sclerosis and he died in March 1959.
Mollie's second husband, Rab Butler, was a cabinet minister in Macmillan's government and had long been a close friend. By coincidence, he, too, had married a Courtauld; Sydney, his first wife, was the daughter of Sam Courtauld, a cousin of August's, whose fabulous art collection is now housed at the Courtauld Institute. Butler and Sydney had married in 1926 and had three sons and a daughter. Both families would see a lot of each other at big Courtauld family gatherings and also at Eltham Palace, the magnificent south London home of Sir Stephen Courtauld. Sydney had died of cancer in 1954, and in October 1959, six months after August's death, Mollie married Butler. She was to prove one of the most devoted of political wives.
In 1963 Harold Macmillan resigned because of ill health. Mollie, along with many newspaper editors, TV commentators, and even bookies, thought her husband was the obvious choice to succeed him. But all were all proved wrong when Macmillan recommended to the Queen that the job go to Alec Douglas-Home. Mollie Butler always believed that Macmillan had double-crossed her husband and said so quite vocally after Macmillan's death. Her bitterness, though understandable, had no sound basis; Alec Douglas-Home was the obvious compromise candidate capable of uniting most of the Conservative Party, in the country and at Westminster.
However, contrary to what some have suggested, Mollie's criticism of Macmillan, while he was alive, was muted. She was never openly bad-mannered towards him and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that Macmillan received hospitality from the Butlers at the Master's Lodge when visiting Cambridge in the late Sixties and early Seventies
Mollie Butler, Baroness Butler of Saffron Walden's Timeline
1907 |
September 10, 1907
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Essex, England UK
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1933 |
1933
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1934 |
September 12, 1934
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1938 |
January 1, 1938
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1943 |
May 8, 1943
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2009 |
February 18, 2009
Age 101
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Great Yeldham, Essex, England UK
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