Lady Saltoun, the hereditary royal who revived the House of Lords – obituary

21. Lady Saltoun, who has died aged 93, was Chief and Name of Arms of Clan Fraser, one of the few hereditary peers to sit in the House of Lords and – through her marriage to Queen Victoria’s great-grandson – a member of the extended royal family. She was entitled to a red crown on her car on royal occasions: the last name on the list of royal precedences.

Flora Fraser was the head of the Lowland Frasers of Philorth, who traced their roots to Anjou; their seat is Castle Fraser in Aberdeenshire. By a decree of the Lord Lyon’s Court in 1984, she was made head of “the whole Fraser clan”. However, this ruling was treated with indifference by the Frasers of Lovat, as the Lord Lyon’s decree did not apply to the Highland clans; the current Lord Lovat, Simon Fraser, retains the headship of the Peerage of Scotland.

(Marjorie) Flora Fraser was born in Edinburgh on 18 October 1930. She was the daughter of the 20th Lord Saltoun and his wife Dorothy Welby, daughter of Sir Charles Welby, Baronet, former Member of Parliament.

The title of Saltoun was created in 1445 for Sir Lawrence Abernethy, a descendant of Hugh, hereditary abbot of the Pictish abbey of Abernethy on the Tay, which existed in 1172. 4. Lord Saltoun fought at Flodden and escaped. On Margaret Abernethy’s death in 1669 the title passed to her cousin Alexander Fraser, a loyal supporter of Charles I and Charles II, and has remained with the Frasers of Philorth ever since.

Flora’s most distinguished ancestor was the 17th Lord Saltoun, KT (1785-1853), who served in the Peninsular War, at Waterloo and in China. For his defence of Hougoumont, the Duke of Wellington called him “a model for the army both as a man and a soldier”.

The Frasers of Philorth founded the fishing port of Fraserburgh, but went bankrupt in the late 16th century trying to establish a university there. They had to sell Philorth Castle, and it was not until 1934 that Flora’s father was able to buy it back (it was renamed Cairnbulg Castle).

He succeeded him as 19th Lord Saltoun, but was later presumed to be 20th, as it was established that his ancestor Margaret Abernethy was the 10th Lady Saltoun, not the 9th as previously thought, having outlived her brother, the 8th Lord Saltoun, by 10 weeks.

In February 1944 Flora’s older brother, the Master of Saltoun, was wounded and captured while serving in the Grenadier Guards. His whereabouts were unknown for a year, after which he was presumed dead. At that point Flora became the sole heir. In 1951 she trained as a Chartered Secretary at the City Office.

When Flora became engaged in 1956 to Captain Alexander Ramsay, who had lost a leg while serving in North Africa in 1943, the Queen was required to give her consent in council under the Royal Marriages Act, which she did aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia in Leith before she went ashore to attend the Edinburgh Festival.

“Sandy” Ramsay was the son of the former Princess Patricia of Connaught, known as Lady Patricia Ramsay after her marriage in 1919, and one of the last living granddaughters of Queen Victoria.

As a child, Sandy attended the young Princess Elizabeth’s receptions. During her engagement, Flora was taken to live with her aunt, Princess Arthur of Connaught, where she bowed to the bedridden invalid.

The Ramsays attended all the major royal events in Britain and followed the Queen up the steps at her annual garden party at Holyroodhouse. They also made frequent trips to Stockholm and Copenhagen, because Sandy’s aunt, Princess Margaret of Connaught, married the heir to the Swedish throne.

At the time of the wedding, Sandy was an assistant at Lord Linlithgow’s Queensferry estate. They were married in a small local church in Fraserburgh, and the reception was held at the bride’s home, Cairnbulg Castle. The ceremony was notable for its lack of pomp: Flora carried no flowers, had no bridesmaids, and designed her own gown of white peau de soie. She wore a simple pearl tiara.

Despite this, the crowds of well-wishers had to be held back by police. The wedding was attended by the Queen Mother, who was reportedly visiting north-east Scotland for the first time, and the groom’s cousin, Queen Ingrid of Denmark, who had never visited Scotland before.

The couple inherited Mar Lodge in Aberdeenshire from Princess Arthur of Connaught, who died in 1959, but because all the furniture had been passed on to her nephew, the Duke of Fife, they had to improvise. They later built a model baronial house nearby.

Flora had never cooked an egg until she was married, but she took a Cordon Bleu course and became a first-class cook. As a child raised during rationing, she was taught to avoid waste, and any leftovers the family didn’t eat were put in buckets for the pigs or chickens. She also served the hottest dry martinis in Scotland.

Flora succeeded her father as Lady Saltoun in 1979. When most of the hereditary peers were removed from the House of Lords in 1999, she was one of 28 crossbenchers – and the only holder of the title of Lord of the House of Commons – elected to remain. She served on the Ecclesiastical and Procedure Committees of the Upper House and spoke regularly until the age of 80 on devolution, House of Lords reform and procedure, the Common Fisheries Policy and same-sex marriage, bringing a strong element of common sense to debates until her retirement in 2014.

In 2011, she defended the tradition of peers addressing each other in the third person, stating: “It’s much harder to be rude to someone when you have to address them in the third person. It’s worth the time and effort to do it, simply because it defuses the situation. Make no mistake, we do our jobs just as well when we’re polite and friendly to each other – in fact, we do it much better than when we’re in a bad mood, because it’s easier to work together to find a way forward.”

She disapproved of the interruption of the Peer’s speech, comparing the “cabal” that recently decided to torment the Peer’s speech to “sharks smelling blood.”

Naturally, Lady Saltoun opposed the removal of the hereditary element: “What is this compulsion to destroy things that seems to grip even people who should know better? It is simply an exclusive version of the compulsion to destroy things that grips idle and unemployed youth in gated communities. It is obvious that I am mistaken in expecting the Government to know better, for I see very little difference between their plans for reforming this House and the vandalism of hooligan culture.

“It is not without reason that our Parliament is called the Mother of Parliaments. It is the model on which most Commonwealth Parliaments, and indeed most of the Parliaments of the free world, are based – not because they are all exact copies, just as children are never exact copies of their parents. Some are good, some less so, but whatever the merits or demerits of its offspring, this Parliament was the matrix, and what does the Coalition want to do? Destroy half of them.”

She lamented that Labour’s reforms had filled the chamber with “a flood of the Prime Minister’s cronies”. In June 2010, she said: “I don’t think the people of this country want to destroy the House of Lords. It is the Government that want to destroy the House when it does its duty, by preventing them from getting their way without a moment’s thought. That is why the Government are determined to do what they propose. They don’t want to destroy – because we would – the House because it doesn’t work. They want to destroy it because it works – too well for their comfort.”

Lady Saltoun could be formidable at first glance, but once she had won her trust, she was utterly loyal and warm. She was especially generous to any Fraser from abroad who called unexpectedly to see family portraits. A slightly unsettling driver, she drove at high speed.

She was a great support to the Duke of Kent in 1970 when, as the new President of the RNLI, he attended the funerals of five lifeboat crew who died off the coast of Fraserburgh. The same lifeboat had been launched by his mother, Princess Marina, after an earlier disaster in 1953, when five more crew members died. These successive tragedies had a profound effect on the Duke, and his last engagement in May before stepping down from royal duties was a visit to Fraserburgh.

The last major royal event that Lady Saltoun attended was Prince William’s wedding at Westminster Abbey in 2011. The King and Lord Lyon, the King’s heraldic officer, had to be informed of her death so it could be made public.

Flora and Captain Ramsay had three daughters: Katherine, goddaughter of Queen Ingrid and the Princess Royal (Princess Mary); Alice, goddaughter of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester; and Elizabeth.

Kate, known for many years as Lady Saltoun, now succeeds her mother as 22nd Baroness Saltoun and head of Clan Fraser.

Lady Saltoun, born 18 October 1930, death announced 4 September 2024.

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