After spending some time at Cheam School, he was educated for the army, but presently, with a view to holy orders, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1864 and M.A. in 1878. In the following year he was ordained by the Bishop of Worcester, and after holding successive appointments at Nuneaton, Gateshead, and Derby, he was assigned by the Crown the District Rectory of All Souls, Marylebone, in 1878.

He took an active part in initiating the parochial mission movement in the Church of England, and though he had inherited the estate of Douglas Support, near Coatbridge, from Brigadier-General Sir Thomas Monteith Douglas in 1868, he remained in his English charge till 1887. In that year he accepted the incumbency of St. Silas' English Episcopal Church, off Woodlands Road, Glasgow, which had been built by his father and others. This charge he resigned only in 1899.

He succeeded his brother, the first Lord Blythswood, in the title and estates in July, 1908. A month previously his own historic residence of Douglas Support had been destroyed by fire, but 'it is being rebuilt and will be occupied by his brother and heir General Barrington C. Douglas.'

'His Lordship has for long been in the habit of holding a conference of clergymen of all evangelical denominations at Douglas Support thrice a year for consideration of devotional and missionary subjects. He has three mission halls on the estate, and supports a resident missionary and Bible-woman.'

In 1899 he married Violet Mary, daughter of the late Lord Alfred Paget, and grand-daughter of the late Marquis of Anglesey. She died in June, 1908.

The grandson of Provost (of GlaSGOW) Colin Campbell entailed the Blythswood estates in 1739 strictly on his heirs male. On the failure of these in 1767, it passed, in terms of this entail, to James Douglas of Mains, the head of an ancient family settled in the parish of New Kilpatrick and county of Dumbarton. He assumed the title of Campbell of Blythswood, and dying in 1773 was succeeded in Blythswood, first by his elder son, John, who was killed at Martinique, and next by his younger son, Archibald, who was M.P. for the Glasgow District of Burghs. Both died unmarried, the latter in 1838. A third son, James, died a lieutenant in the 55th regiment in 1781.

The Campbells of Blythswood in the direct line, having thus again failed, the Douglases of Mains for the second time furnished a successor to Blythswood, in the person of Archibald Douglas of Mains. He took the name of Campbell, and, under the entail, gave up the estate of Mains to his brother Colin. On his death in 1868 Archibald Campbells Campbell, his eldest son, succeeded (see Mains).