Esmé Stewart, 3rd Duke of Lennox (1579 – 30 July 1624), KG, 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny, lord of the Manor of Cobham, Kent, was a Scottish nobleman and through their paternal lines was a second cousin of King James VI of Scotland and I of England. He was a patron of the playwright Ben Jonson who lived in his household for five years.

Origins

He was the younger son of Esmé Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox (1542–1583), a Frenchman of Scottish ancestry and a favourite of King James VI of Scotland (of whose father, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, he was a first cousin), by his wife Catherine de Balsac (died after 1630), a daughter of Guillaume de Balsac, Sieur d'Entragues, by his wife Louise d'Humières.

Career

At the death of his childless elder brother, Ludovic Stewart, 2nd Duke of Lennox, 1st Duke of Richmond (1574–1624), he inherited their paternal title of Duke of Lennox, the Dukedom of Richmond having become extinct. He was by then already Earl of March (in the peerage of England) (1619) and Baron Clifton of Leighton Bromswold (in the right of his wife). He had become the 7th Seigneur d'Aubigny in France when his elder brother surrendered the title following their father's death. On 9 February 1608, he performed in the masque The Hue and Cry After Cupid at Whitehall Palace as a sign of the zodiac, to celebrate the wedding of John Ramsay, Viscount Haddington to Elizabeth Radclyffe. In 1624, the year of his death, he was invested as a Knight of the Garter.

Marriage and children

In 1609, he married Katherine Clifton, 2nd Baroness Clifton, by whom he had eleven children, third cousins of King Charles I, for whom many of them fought and died in the English Civil War:

Sons

Daughters

Death and burial

He died on 30 July 1624 at Kirby Hall, Northamptonshire, of the "spotted ague". He was buried, on 6 August 1624, in Westminster Abbey, in the Richmond Vault in the south-east apsidal chapel of the Chapel of King Henry VII (himself formerly Earl of Richmond).