The 2nd Duke of Buckingham owed £1.46 million, fled his creditors, and Christie's sold the contents of Stowe in 1848

Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, inherited Stowe in Buckinghamshire with debts already on it. By 1845 he owed £1,464,959. Queen Victoria's visit that year added cost; a Persian carpet bought for it for £200 later sold for £55. In August 1847 he went abroad to escape his creditors, and bailiffs took possession of the house^†. In March 1848 about 36,000 acres were sold in Ireland and several English counties. Christie's sold the contents at Stowe from 15 August to 7 October 1848, about 40 days of selling^†. The sale raised £75,400. Rembrandt's "The Centurion Cornelius" made £2,300, the top price for a painting. The silver went in 836 lots in one week. More than 20,000 library books took 24 days at Sotheby's in January 1849 and raised £10,356. The estate fell to 10,000 acres and the garden staff from 40 to 4. The Duke died at the Great Western Hotel, Paddington, on 29 July 1861. In 1921 the Rev. Luis Morgan-Grenville sold the house, gardens and part of the park to Harry Shaw for £50,000. The remaining contents were auctioned in 1921, and chimneypieces in 1922. Shaw could not fund an endowment and sold the empty house in 1922 to the founders of Stowe School, which opened on 11 May 1923 with 99 boys. The National Trust received the gardens in 1989. In 2026 the Stowe House Preservation Trust, owner since 1997, is raising money for the Leoni Arches.