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The Earl of Dalhousie

Fox Maule-Ramsay, 11th Earl of Dalhousie, KT, GCB, PC (22 April 1801 – 6 July 1874), known as Fox Maule before 1852, as Lord Panmure between 1852 and 1860 and as Earl of Dalhousie after 1860, was a British politician.

Fox Maule was the eldest son of the 1st Baron Panmure (1771–1852), and a grandson of the 8th Earl of Dalhousie. Christened Fox as a compliment to Charles James Fox, the great Whig, he served for a term in the Army, and then in 1835 entered the House of Commons as member for Perthshire.

In the ministry of Lord Melbourne (1835–1841), Maule was Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, and under Lord John Russell, he was Secretary at War from July 1846 to January 1852, when for two or three weeks he was President of the Board of Control. In April 1852, he succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Panmure. In early 1855, he joined Lord Palmerston's cabinet, filling the new office of Secretary of State for War. Lord Panmure held this office until February 1858. He was at the War Office during the concluding period of the Crimean War, and met a good deal of criticism. He was Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland from 1853 until his death.

Always interested in church matters, Dalhousie was a prominent supporter of the Free Church of Scotland after it split from the Church of Scotland in the disruption of 1843.

In December 1860, he succeeded his kinsman, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie, as 11th Earl of Dalhousie. He shortly afterwards changed his surname to "Maule-Ramsay" (his father had changed his surname to "Maule" from the family's patronymic "Ramsay" before being created Baron Panmure). He died childless on 6 July 1874. On his death, the Barony of Panmure became extinct, but the Earldom of Dalhousie (and its subsidiary titles) passed to his cousin, George Ramsay (1806–1880), an Admiral who, in 1875, was created a Peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Ramsay.

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• G. Douglas and G. D. Ramsay (editors), Panmure Papers, 1908. These numerous letters from Panmure's correspondence throw much light on the concluding stage of the Crimean War.