Death and Taxes

In England's more spacious days, Sir William Cavendish won his family's fortunes as one of Henry VIII's crown commissioners, requisitioning monastic estates for the crown and the nobles; his great-great-grandson, the first Duke of Devonshire, won political power for the family by leading the Revolution of 1688 against the last of the Stuarts. On the ancestral Derbyshire lands the duke reared a vast palace that stands today in its 50,000-acre wooded park as a proud symbol of the centuries of the Whig ascendancy. Successive dukes festooned Chatsworth's 273 rooms with Michelangelos, Raphaels and Rembrandts. classic sculptures and ancient books. To Chatsworth. where earlier Cavendishes had kept Mary Queen of Scots prisoner, came Burke, Fox and other generations of Whig and Liberal leaders of empire to talk of cabinets and kings. Today, long after the Whig decline, Chatsworth preserves its influence in other ways: Prime Minister Harold Macmillan is only one of several British statesmen married to a Cavendish.*

In the leveling 20th century, Chatsworth, like many another ancestral seat, seemed destined to be broken up to pay death duties. In 1950 the tenth duke died, only twelve years after his father's death had compelled him to sell off land in eight English counties and in Ireland to meet inheritance taxes. To hang on to Chatsworth, the tenth duke negotiated a contract with his wife and the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry to take over $5,200,000 worth of the estate, thus exempting that much from death duties. But by law such gifts must be made at least five years before the donor's death, and the duke's heart attack occurred just three months short of the fateful limit.

On the value of his Devonshire estate, provisionally estimated to be -L-3,000,000 ($8,400,000), a full 80% was due the government.

Testament of Beauty. It looked as if the eleventh duke would have to put Chatsworth on the block, and see its treasures scattered round the world. But the young Devonshire, whose family motto is Cavendo tutus (Secure by Caution), vowed: "I will fight to the bitter end." At this point he was aided by the legal handiwork of a doctrinaire Socialist. Back in 1946 Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton, operating on the Socialist theory that "the best that still remains should surely become the heritage not of a few private owners but of all our people," set aside a $140 million fund to reimburse the internal revenue department for land and historic houses accepted in lieu of death duties. Last year the Tories widened Dalton's plan to include work's of art, and the duke saw his chance to save Chatsworth after all.

Settlement of Duty. Last week, after long and hard dickering among legal experts and art connoisseurs, he reached a settlement with the Treasury by which, as a $3,360,000 installment on his inheritance tax, he will hand over Hardwick Hall, one of the finest Elizabethan mansions in existence, together with its 934-acre park, and eight major works of art from the Chatsworth collection, including works by Rembrandt, Memling. Holbein and Van Dyck. The paintings will go to British museums. Hardwick Hall will be administered by the National Trust, and be open to the public four days a week, though the 86-year-old Dowager Duchess of Devonshire may live there for the rest of her days. The deal was by far the largest of its kind ever made. The 37-year-old duke, who had previously paid in more than $2,800,000, now thinks he can meet the rest of the tax without drastic liquidation. And he still holds Chatsworth, where he will continue to live with his family in a cottage on the estate, and will continue to collect half crowns from the tourists who traipse (at the rate of 125,000 a year) through the stateliest of all the stately homes of England.

*Lady Dorothy Evelyn Macmillan is the daughter of the ninth duke.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.