Ancestral Trails 2016 » William VILLIERS (1614-1643)

Personal data William VILLIERS 

• He was born in the year 1614 in London, Middlesex.
• Title: 2nd Viscount Grandison of Limerick
• He died on September 20, 1643 in Newbury, Berkshire, he was 29 years old.

  Battle of Newbury (1st Battle of the Civil War)

• A child of Edward VILLIERS and Barbara St JOHN

Household of William VILLIERS

He is married to Mary BAYNING.

They got married on October 31, 1639, he was 25 years old.

Child(ren):

1. Barbara VILLIERS  1641-1709 

Notes about William VILLIERS

William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison (1614-1643) was an English knight, Irish peer, and Cavalier soldier who was killed leading a cavalry attack at the First Battle of Newbury.

Early life and family
Villiers was the eldest son of Sir Edward Villiers, a half-brother of the influential George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, by his marriage to Barbara St John (c. 1592-1672) a daughter of Sir John St John, of Lydiard Tregoze. His maternal grandmother, Lucy Hungerford, had been a daughter of Sir Walter Hungerford of Farleigh Castle. Apart from being a nephew of Buckingham, the young Villiers had two other uncles at court, John Villiers, 1st Viscount Purbeck, and Kit Villiers, 1st Earl of Anglesey, and an aunt, the Countess of Denbigh, who was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Henrietta Maria. His grandfather, Sir George Villiers, had died in 1606, but as a child he knew his step-grandmother Mary Villiers, Countess of Buckingham (c. 1570-1632).

Life
Villiers grew up mostly in London, where his father held offices of profit under the Crown. In 1617, Sir Edward was promoted to Master of the Mint, a post which gave him rooms at the Tower of London. On 23 June 1623, when his childless great-uncle Oliver St John (1559-1630) was created Viscount Grandison in the peerage of Ireland, the honour was made subject to a special remainder that it would be inherited by the heirs male of St John's niece Barbara Villiers. This had the effect of making the nine-year old Villiers the heir to the peerage. His father, Sir Edward Villiers, died in Ireland in September 1626, while serving as Lord President of Munster, and his great-uncle died on 30 December 1630, whereupon Villiers became the second Lord Grandison. He inherited some property from both.

In 1638 the king knighted Grandison at Windsor, together with the Prince of Wales and Thomas Bruce, 1st Earl of Elgin. He was a friend of Edward Hyde, who in a eulogy reported that "he had sometimes indulged so much to the Corrupt opinion of Honour, as to venture himself in Duels". In 1639, Grandison married Mary Bayning, then aged fourteen, one of the daughters of the late Lord Bayning, who was heiress to a fortune of £180,000, and the next year they had a daughter, Barbara Villiers, who was christened on 27 November 1640 at St Margaret's, Westminster.

A strong supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil War, which broke out in August 1642, Grandison spent his fortune on horses and equipment for a regiment of Cavaliers in support of the king. On 23 October 1642, Grandison's regiment was on the royalists' left wing at the Battle of Edgehill. During the fighting, the king's standard-bearer, Sir Edmund Verney, was killed, and the royal standard captured. Three of Grandison's men, led by John Smith, recovered it, and Smith was knighted on the field, becoming the last knight banneret created in England. Grandison gave him a troop to lead and promoted him to major.

At the Battle of Newbury on 20 September 1643, Grandison was one of the three brigadiers under the command of Prince Rupert of the Rhine and led his brigade in a charge on the Prior's Hill Fort and a redoubt at Stokes Croft. The attack was repulsed, and Grandison died of his wounds, together with his cousin Edward St John, a son of his uncle Sir John St John. He left a widow and daughter impoverished by the war, and soon after his death his widow married his first cousin Charles Villiers, 2nd Earl of Anglesey.

As Grandison had no son, he was succeeded by a younger brother, John Villiers. After the Restoration, Grandison's only child, Barbara Villiers, became a royal mistress of King Charles II, in 1670 was created Duchess of Cleveland, and became the ancestor of several noble families, including the Dukes of Grafton. Grandison's mother, Barbara Lady Villiers, born about 1592, lived into her eighties and saw the Restoration and the early years of her great-grandchildren.

Lord Grandison's youngest brother, Edward, was the father of Edward Villiers, 1st Earl of Jersey, and the present-day Viscount Grandison is his descendant, William Villiers (born 1976), a film executive.
SOURCE: Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Villiers,_2nd_Viscount_Grandison

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Timeline William VILLIERS

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