Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond

Sir Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond (died 1628) was a favourite of King James VI and I of Scotland and England. In 1609 the king made him Lord Dingwall. In 1614 he married him to Elizabeth Butler, the only child of Black Tom, the 10th Earl of Ormond. In 1619 he created him Earl of Desmond.

Richard Preston
Earl of Desmond
Tenure	1619–1628
Died	28 October 1628
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Butler
Issue Detail	Elizabeth
Father	Richard Preston of Whitehill

Background and early life

Richard was born the third son of Richard Preston of Whitehill in Midlothian, near Edinburgh. His family was gentry of the Edinburgh area and owned Craigmillar Castle in the late 16th and early 17th century.

Family tree

Richard Preston with wife, parents, and other selected relatives. James 10th Earl d. 1529 James 9th Earl 1496–1546 Joan FitzGerald d. 1565 Thomas 10th Earl c. 1531 – 1614 Black Tom Elizabeth Sheffield John of Kilcash d. 1570 Katherine MacCarthy Theobald Viscount Tulleophelim d. 1613 Elizabeth Butler c. 1585 – 1628 Richard Preston 1st Earl Desmond d. 1628 Walter 11th Earl 1559 – 1633 'Beads' Helen Butler d. 1631 Thomas Viscount Thurles d. 1619 d.v.p.* Elizabeth Pointz 1587–1673 Elizabeth Preston 1615–1684 James 1st Duke 1610–1688 Richard of Kilcash 1615–1701 Thomas 6th Earl Ossory 1633–1680 d.v.p.* Emilia von Nassau 1635–1688 Richard 1st Earl Arran 1639–1684 Elizabeth Countess of Chesterfield 1640–1665 Walter of Garryricken d. 1700 Legend XXX Richard Preston XXX Earls & dukes of Ormond XXX Earls of Desmond *d.v.p. = predeceased his father (decessit vita patris).

Favourite

His family placed Richard (the younger) as a page at the King's court in Edinburgh where he is mentioned in that capacity in 1591. King James had a series of personal relationships with male courtiers, called his favourites, suspected to have been the king's homosexual partners. Esmé Stewart, whom he made Earl and Duke of Lennox, seems to have been the first. After the Raid of Ruthven in 1582, the King was forced to exile Lord Lennox to France.

Richard, the page, gained the king's special favour in the 1580s or 1590s after Lennox's departure. When James acceded the English throne as James I in 1603, Richard accompanied him to England and was knighted at the King's coronation in London on 25 July 1603 in the old elaborate ceremony that included the bathing of the new knight. He then was made a groom of the privy chamber. In 1607 Richard was appointed constable of Dingwall Castle in Scotland. He bought the barony of Dingwall and on 8 June 1609 the King created him Lord Dingwall. In London the King met in 1608 Robert Carr who became his favourite and seems to have supplanted Lord Dingwall, as he was now, in that role.

In 1609 Preston attended the Accession day tournament, and presented a pageant of an artificial elephant, designed by Inigo Jones, which made its way slowly around the tiltyard.

Marriage and child

In 1614 the King arranged for Lord Dingwall a marriage with the rich heiress Lady Elizabeth Butler, only daughter of the Black Tom, the 10th Earl of Ormonde and widow of Theobald Butler, 1st Viscount Butler of Tulleophelim, who died childless in January 1613.

The King imposed this marriage on Black Tom, Elizabeth's father, who did not want the royal favourite for a son-in-law but could not oppose the King's will. Black Tom died soon after the marriage on 22 November 1614.

Richard and Elizabeth had an only child:

• Elizabeth (1615–1684), married James Butler and became Duchess of Ormond.

Later life and death

On 19 July 1619 Lord Dingwall was created Earl of Desmond. The Earldom of Desmond had originally been held by the Hiberno-Norman FitzGerald dynasty who were stripped of the title after the failure of the Second Desmond Rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England. After Richard Preston's death, the title again became extinct but, under the terms of letter patent issued by James I in 1622, it was immediately re-created for George Feilding (son of the Earl of Denbigh) who was intended to marry Preston's daughter.

Alfred Webb tells us of this creation of the earldom of Desmond that:

Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, in right of his mother, Joan FitzGerald, daughter of the 11th Earl of Desmond, claimed the Earldom after the death and attainder of all the heirs male. When his daughter was married to James I.'s Scotch favourite, Sir Richard Preston, the title was conferred on him. When the only child of the latter, a daughter, was about to be married to the son of the Earl of Denbigh, the title was passed to the intended bridegroom. The marriage never took place; yet the title was retained [by] the Earls of Denbigh.

On 26 May 1623, King James I made the young James Butler, the future Duke of Ormond, a ward of Lord Desmond, and placed James at Lambeth, London, under the care of George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury to be brought up as a Protestant.

His wife, Elizabeth Butler died on 10 October 1628 in Wales. On 28 October 1628 Lord Desmond was drowned on a passage between Dublin and Holyhead.

Timeline
As his birth date is uncertain, so are all his ages.
Age	Date	Event
0	1580, estimate	Born, near Edinburgh
10–11	1591	Page at the court in Edinburgh.
22–23	1603, 24 Mar	Accession of King James I, succeeding Queen Elizabeth I
26–27	1607	Made constable of Dingwall Castle.
28–29	1609, 8 Jun	Became Lord Dingwall.
33–34	1614	Married Elizabeth Butler.
33–34	1614, 22 Nov	Father-in-law, Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond, died at Carrick.
34–35	1615, 25 Jul	Daughter born.
38–39	1619, 16 Jul	Became Earl of Desmond
44–45	1625, 27 Mar	Accession of King Charles I, succeeding King James I
47–48	1628, 10 Oct	Wife died in Wales.
47–48	1628, 28 Oct	Drowned on a passage between Dublin and Holyhead

Notes and references

Sources

• Birch, Thomas; Williams, Robert Folkestone (1848). The Court and Times of James I. London: Henry Colburn. OCLC 00691754.
• Butler, Martin (2008). The Stuart Court Masque and Political Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-88354-2.
• Carte, Thomas (1851) [1st pub. 1736]. The Life of James Duke of Ormond. Vol. I (New ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. OCLC 1086656347. – 1613 to 1641
• Cokayne, George Edward (1890). Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant. Vol. III (1st ed.). London: George Bell and Sons. OCLC 1180838776. – D to F (for Desmond)
• Cokayne, George Edward (1895). Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant. Vol. VI (1st ed.). London: George Bell and Sons. OCLC 1180818801. – N to R (for Ormond)
• Crawfurd, George (1716). The Peerage of Scotland: Containing an Historical and Genealogical Account of the Nobility of that Kingdom. Edinburgh: Printed for the author. OCLC 1050789005.
• Dunboyne, Patrick Theobald Tower Butler, Baron (1968). Butler Family History (2nd ed.). Kilkenny: Rothe House.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Fryde, Edmund Boleslaw; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I., eds. (1986). Handbook of British Chronology. Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks, No. 2 (3rd ed.). London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society. ISBN 0-86193-106-8. – (for timeline)
• Lodge, John (1789). Archdall, Mervyn (ed.). The Peerage of Ireland or, A Genealogical History of the Present Nobility of that Kingdom. Vol. IV. Dublin: James Moore. OCLC 264906028. – Viscounts (for Butler, Viscount Mountgarrett)
• Paul, Sir James Balfour (1906). The Scots Peerage, Founded on Wood's Edition of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland. Vol. III. Edinburgh: David Douglas. OCLC 505064285. – Crawford to Falkland (for Dingwall)
• Paul, Sir James Balfour (1908). The Scots Peerage, Founded on Wood's Edition of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland. Vol. V. Edinburgh: David Douglas. OCLC 505064285. – Innermeath to Mar (for Lennox)
• Webb, Alfred (1878). "Desmond, John". Compendium of Irish Biography. Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son. p. 146. OCLC 122693688. – (for Richard Preston)