Lennox, Charles, 1st Duke of Richmond and Lennox (1672 -1723)

Charles Lennox was the illegitimate son of King Charles II of Great Britain, and his mistress Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. He was created Duke of Richmond, Earl of March and Baron Settrington in the Peerage of England on 9 August 1675, and Duke of Lennox, Earl of Darnley and Lord Torbolton in the Peerage of Scotland on 9 September 1675. Louis XIV of France also granted him the title of Duke of Aubigny. In 1681 he was invested as a Knight of the Garter. He was appointed Lord High Admiral of Scotland, 1701-1705 but relinquished the title when he resigned all his Scottish offices. When his father died, and his uncle James II, came to the throne in 1685, he and his mother fled to Paris, where he formally accepted Roman Catholicism, and served in the French armies. In 1692, however, after the Protestant revolution in Britain, he secretly made his way back to England, where he renounced Catholicism, accepted Anglicanism, befriended William III, becoming his aide-de-camp from 1693 to 1702. He was later privy councillor in the reign of George I. and lord of the bedchamber from 1714 to 1723. On 8 January 1692 he married Anne Brudenell (d. 1722), daughter of Francis, Baron Brudenell, and had three children. His second child and only son, also named Charles, succeeded him to the dukedoms on his death. Charles Lennox is an ancestor of the present Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and also to Sarah, Duchess of York. He is also an ancestor of the Earls Spencer of Althorp, of Diana, Princess of Wales, and also of Diana's sons, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, the heir to the British throne, and his younger brother, Prince Harry.