September 28, 1663: Birth of Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton

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1st Duke of Grafton, 1st Duke of Marlborough, Barbara Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, Duke of Monmouth, Glorious Revolution of 1688, Henry FitzRoy, Isabella Bennet, James Scott, John Churchill, King Charles II of England, King James II-VII of England, Monmouth Rebellion, Scotland and Ireland, William III of Orange

Henry FitzRoy, 1st Duke of Grafton, KG (September 28, 1663 – October 9, 1690) was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland and his mistress Barbara Villiers. A military commander, Henry FitzRoy was appointed colonel of the Grenadier Guards in 1681 and Vice-Admiral of England from 1682 to 1689. He was killed in the storming of Cork during the Williamite–Jacobite War in 1690.

Early life and military career

Born to Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine in 1663, Henry FitzRoy was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England, the second by Barbara Villiers. His mother was the daughter of William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison, and Mary Bayning (1623-1672), heiress to a fortune of £180,000. Viscount Grandison was a colonel of one of King Charles I’s regiments who was killed in action during the Civil War.

William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison, was born in 1614, eldest son of Sir Edward Villiers (1585-1626) and Barbara St. John (ca 1592-1672). His father was the older half-brother of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, favourite of both James I-VI of England, Scotland and Ireland and Charles I, a relationship from which he greatly benefitted.

On August 1, 1672, at the age of nine, a marriage was arranged for Henry FitzRoy to the five-year-old Isabella Bennet, the only daughter of Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, a Royalist commander, by his wife, Elisabeth of Nassau (1633–1718). Elisabeth was a daughter of Louis of Nassau-Beverweerd and thus a granddaughter of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and a great-granddaughter of Prince Willem I the Silent, Prince of Orange.

In 1675 Charles II created Henry, Duke of Grafton. A wedding ceremony between Henry FitzRoy and Isabella Bennet took place on November 7, 1679. At the time of his marriage, Henry FitzRoy was created Baron Sudbury, Viscount Ipswich, and Earl of Euston. After their wedding the couple lived at Euston Hall. Isabella and her husband had one son, Charles FitzRoy, who succeeded his parents as 2nd Duke of Grafton and 3rd Earl of Arlington.

King Charles II made his son a Knight of the Garter in 1680. He was appointed colonel of the Grenadier Guards in 1681.

FitzRoy was brought up as a sailor and saw military action at the siege of Luxembourg in 1684. In that year, he received a warrant to supersede Sir Robert Holmes as Governor of the Isle of Wight, when the latter was charged with making false musters. However, Holmes was acquitted by court-martial and retained the governorship.

In 1686 Henry FitzRoy killed John Talbot, brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury, in a duel. FitzRoy was appointed Vice-Admiral of the Narrow Seas from 1685 to 1687. At King James II-VII’s coronation, Grafton was Lord High Constable. During the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth he commanded the royal troops in Somerset.

Originally called James Crofts or James Fitzroy, the Duke of Monmouth was Henry Fitzroy’s half-brother, the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland with his mistress Lucy Walter.

Monmouth led the unsuccessful Monmouth Rebellion in 1685, an attempt to depose his uncle King James II-VII. After one of his officers declared Monmouth the legitimate king, (alleging his mother was legally married to Charles II) in the town of Taunton in Somerset, Monmouth attempted to capitalise on his Protestantism and his position as the son of Charles II, in opposition to James, who was a Roman Catholic. The rebellion failed, and Monmouth was beheaded for treason on July 15, 1685.

Henry FitzRoy acted with John Churchill, and joined his cousin and his wife’s kinsman, Prince Willem III of Orange to overthrow the King in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1st Prince of Mindelheim, 1st Count of Nellenburg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, KG, PC (1650 – 1722 O.S.) played a defining role in defeating both the Monmouth Rebellion in 1685 that helped secure James on the throne, but he was also a key player in the military conspiracy that led to James being deposed during the Glorious Revolution.

Death

Henry FitzRoy died in Ireland on October 9, 1690 aged 27, of a wound received at the storming of Cork while leading King William III’s forces. His body was returned to England for burial.

On October 14, 1697 his widow married Sir Thomas Hanmer, a young Buckinghamshire baronet, who became Speaker of the House of Commons and an authority on the works of William Shakespeare. The Dowager Duchess of Grafton died in 1723.

Legacy

The Duke of Grafton owned land in what was then countryside near Dublin, Ireland, which later became part of the city. A country lane on this land eventually developed into Grafton Street, one of Dublin’s main streets. Grafton Alley in Cork, close to where he was shot, also bears his name.

The Duke of Cambridge and royal genealogy

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Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine, Duchess of Portsmouth, Duke of Cambridge, Elizabeth II, Eystein Glumra, HRH The Prince of Wales, King George VI, Kings and Queens of England, kings and queens of the United Kingdom, Kings of Wessex, Louise de Kérouaille, Prince of Wales, Thierry I of Liesgau, William I the Conqueror

Happy 31st birthday to HRH Prince William Arthur Philip Louis of Wales, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, Baron Carrickfergus, Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Knight of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle, Aide-de-camp to Her Majesty the Queen. In honor of his birthday I wanted to focus on The Duke of Cambridge and his genealogy.

I began to study a little more of the genealogy of the Duke of Cambridge and it brought up questions of ethnicity, nationality and I quickly realized how complex of a topic it really is!! In an article I wrote about changing the name of the House of Windsor, I touched upon the royal family’s Germanic roots. It is interesting to trace the nationality of the royal family through the decades from its origins as the Saxon Kingdom of the House of Wessex to today’s House of Windsor. Cerdic of Wessex, the first king of Wessex, reign circa 519-534, was of Germanic origins. The reason that the first king of Wessex was an ethnic German was due to the fact that many Germanic tribes invaded England after the fall of the Roman empire which succeeded in supplanting the native Celtic tribes.

The House of Wessex consolidated its kingdom and became the dominant power in England. However, within 500 years the House of Wessex was replaced by the French line of the Dukes of Normandy in the person of William I the Conqueror 1066-1087. William I of England was not from French stock but was from Norwegian stock as a descendant of Eystein Glumra, Jarl (Earl) of Oppland and Hedmark in Norway. The Plantagenets followed the Normans on the English throne and they were from the House of Anjou, a French noble house descended from Ingelger, Count of Anjou (died 888) . During their long tenure on the English throne the Plantagenet dynasty divided into two collateral branches, the House of Lancaster and the House of York. The Plantagenet dynasty was replaced by the Tudors in 1485 and they were of Welsh nationality and Stock. In 1603 the royal Stuart line from Scotland sat on the English throne. The Stuarts were not originally Scottish as they  were descendants of Alan fitz Flaad a man who was a Breton, an ethnic group located in the region of Brittany in France.

The Hanovarians followed the Stuarts on the British throne in 1714. The House of Hanover was a branch of the House of Guelph in Germany which itself was a collateral branch of the House of Este which were descendants of the Roman/Italian Attii family that migrated from Rome to Este and assisted in defending Italy against the Goths. The Family of Elizabeth II, the Wettins, was also from Germany with Dietrich (ca. 916-ca. 976), also known as Thierry I of Liesgau, being the earliest family member that historians can validate. The Wettin family, in the form of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha came to the British throne under King Edward VII, whose father, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, was a member of. In 1917 the Saxe-Coburg dynasty changed its name to Windsor because of social and political pressure during World War I. The Duke of Cambridge, as a grandson of the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Britain’s current monarch, Elizabeth II, is from the House of Glücksburg, which is a collateral branch of the House of Oldenburg. The House of Oldenburg was also Germanic in origin  with Elimar I, Count of Oldenburg 1101-1108 the founder of the line. The Oldenburg dynasty spread across Europe and ruled Denmark, Norway, Greece, Sweden and Russia at different times in history.

This shows that in the male or paternal line the genealogy of the Duke of Cambridge is of a diverse stock. On his mother’s side, the Duke of Cambridge is related to both the Spencer family as well as the Churchill family and other prominent noble families of Britain. The Duke of Cambridge is also a descendant of King Charles II of England and Scotland through two of the king’s mistresses, Barbara Villiers, Countess of Castlemaine and Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. This makes the future King William V of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of having the distinction of being the only British king who will be a descendant of King Charles I, King Charles II and King Charles III (assuming his father lives to succeed to the throne).

With King George VI having married the daughter of a Scottish Nobleman and the Prince of Wales having married the daughter of an English Nobleman, and with The Duke of Cambridge himself marrying an English woman, the future nationality of the British Royal family is moving away from the foreign dynasties that once sat on the British throne to become more native.