The Origins of the FitzRoy family

Charles II and Barbara Villiers: a scandalous beginning...

Information on this page quoted from http://www.tbheritage.com/Breeders/Grafton/Grafton2.html

Barbara Villiers married Roger Palmer in 1659, but this liaison was short lived, because she soon became one of Charles II's mistresses at Breda before the Restoration in 1660, and her husband was bought off by being created Earl of Castlemaine. She was created Duchess of Cleveland in 1670, but was soon after supplanted in the kings affections by Louise de Keroualle (later Duchess of Portsmouth), and died in 1709.

She had five or six children by Charles II. Although initially and uncharacteristically reluctant to acknowledge Lady Castlemaine's second son, born in 1663, due to her suspected involvement with Sir Charles Berkeley (her husband, Roger Palmer, the reluctant Earl of Castlemaine was apparently not considered a probable sire of the boy), Charles eventually did recognize this child as his.

For this second son, named Henry FitzRoy, against his mothers wishes, Charles arranged a preliminary marriage in 1672, when the boy was nine, to a five year old heiress, Isabella, the daughter of the eminent statesman Henry Benet, Earl of Arlington, who owned Euston Park in Suffolk. Henry was created Duke of Grafton in 1675, and in 1679 the Duke of Grafton, aged 16, married Isabella, aged 12, and provided by the King with crown estates and hereditary revenues. By 1774, these various revenues were worth about £18,000 a year, an enormous fortune at that time.

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