6 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
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]
