# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Stuart, Ludovick

​STUART, LUDOVICK, second Duke of Lennox and Duke of Richmond (1574–1624), eldest son of Esmé, first duke of Lennox [q. v.], by his wife, Catherine de Balsac d'Entragues, was born on 29 Sept. 1574. After the death of the first duke in Paris, 26 May 1583, ‘the king,’ says the author of the ‘History of James Sext,’ ‘was without all quietness of spirit till he should see some of his posterity to possess him in his father's honours and rents’ (p. 192). He therefore sent the master of Gray to convoy the young duke to Scotland, and they arrived at Leith on 13 Nov. (ib.; Calderwood iii. 749; Moysie, Memoirs, p. 47). He was received into the king's special favour, and although a mere boy, was, as next in succession, selected to bear the crown at the next opening of the parliament, 28 May 1584 (Calderwood, iv. 621). On 27 July 1588 he was appointed one of a commission for executing the laws against the jesuits and the papists (Reg. P. C. Scotl. iv. 301), and on 1 Aug. he was named chief commissioner to keep watch in Dumbarton against the Spanish armada (ib. p. 307). When King James left Scotland in October to bring home his bride from Denmark, Lennox, though only fifteen, was appointed president of the council during his absence. By his marriage, 20 April 1591, to Lady Jane Ruthven, daughter of the Earl of Gowrie, whom the previous day he took out of the castle of Wemyss, where she had been ‘warded’ ‘at the king's command for his cause,’ he gave great offence to the king (Calderwood, v. 128); but nevertheless on 4 Aug. he was proclaimed lord high admiral in place of Bothwell (ib. p. 139). About May 1593 he was reconciled with certain nobles with whom he was at feud, and was allowed to return to court (ib. p. 249).
When the king returned south from the pursuit of Huntly, Errol, and other rebels in the north in November 1594, Lennox, on the 7th, obtained a commission of lieutenancy in the north (Reg. P. C. Scotl. v. 187), that he might continue the work of quieting the country. According to Calderwood, ‘he travelled with Huntly,’ who was his brother-in-law, ‘and Errol, to depart out of the kingdom, which they did, more to satisfy the king than for any hard pursuit’ (History, v. 357). On his return to Edinburgh an act was passed, 17 Feb. 1594–5, approving of his proceedings as the king's lieutenant (Reg. P. C. Scotl. v. 207). On 7 July 1598 he had a commission of lieutenancy of the Island of Lewis (ib. p. 468), and on 9 July 1599 a commission of lieutenancy over the highlands and islands (ib. vi. 8).
Lennox was one of those who accompanied the king from Falkland to Perth in 1600, when the Earl of Gowrie and the master of Ruthven were slain; and he took an active part on behalf of the king against his brother-in-law. On 1 July 1601 he was sent on an embassy to France, John Spottiswood [q. v.], afterwards archbishop of St. Andrews, being appointed to attend on him (Calderwood, vi. 136; see especially Spotiswood, History, iii. 100). On his way home he arrived in November in London, where for three weeks he was entertained with great splendour by Elizabeth.
On the accession of James to the English throne in 1603, he attended him on the journey south, but was sent back with a warrant to receive the young prince Henry from ​the Earl of Mar, and deliver him to the queen (ib. iii. 140). On 18 June he was naturalised in England, and in the same year he was also made a gentleman of the bedchamber and a privy councillor. On 6 Aug. 1603 he had a grant of the manors of Settrington, Temple-Newsam, and Wensleydale, Yorkshire, and 600l. a year (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, p. 28). He also received a large portion of the Cobham estates upon the attainder of Henry Brooke, lord Cobham [q. v.] (see Archæologia Cantiana, xi. 225). In 1604–5 he was ambassador to Paris, and in August 1605 he accompanied the king to Oxford, where he was on 31 Aug. made M.A. On 21 July 1607 he was named high commissioner of the king to the Scottish parliament. On 6 Oct. 1613 he was created Baron Settrington in the county of York, and Earl of Richmond. In 1614 he was named deputy earl marshal, and in November 1616 he was made steward of the household. In May 1617 he accompanied the king on his visit to Scotland. He was named lieutenant of Kent in November 1620, and from May to July 1621 was joint commissioner of the great seal. A strenuous supporter of the king's ecclesiastical policy in Scotland, he was one of those who on 5 July 1621 voted for the obnoxious ecclesiastical articles known as the four articles of Perth. On 17 Aug. 1623 he was created Earl of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Duke of Richmond. He died suddenly in bed in his lodging at Whitehall, on the morning of 16 Feb. 1623–4, the day fixed for the opening of parliament, which on that account was deferred, and on 19 April his corpse was conveyed ‘with all magnificence from Ely House in the Holborn to interment in Westminster Abbey’ (Sir James Balfour, Annals, ii. 100), where a magnificent tomb was erected, in Henry VII's chapel, by the widow. ‘His death,’ says Calderwood, ‘was dolorous both to English and Scottish. He was well liked of for his courtesy, meekness, liberality to his servants and followers’ (History, vii. 595). The duke was thrice married: first, to Sophia, third daughter of William Ruthven, first earl of Gowrie; secondly, to Jane, widow of Hon. Robert Montgomerie, and daughter of Sir Matthew Campbell of Loudon, father of Hugh, first lord Campbell of Loudon; and, thirdly, to Frances, daughter of Thomas Howard, first viscount Howard of Bindon and widow of Edward Seymour, earl of Hertford [q. v.]; she died on 8 Oct. 1639 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, with her last husband (see Archæologia Cantiana, xi. 230). As he left no issue the dukedom of Richmond, the earldom of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the barony of Settrington became extinct; but he was succeeded in the dukedom of Lennox by his next brother, Esmé Stuart, third Duke of Lennox (1579–1624), who in 1583 had succeeded his father as eighth seigneur of Aubigny. He, however, had returned to this country in 1603, was naturalised an Englishman on 24 May 1603, and from that date principally resided in England. He did not long survive his succession to the dukedom, dying of putrid fever on 30 July 1624. By his wife, Katherine Clifton, only daughter and heiress of Sir Gervase Clifton, created in 1608 Lord Clifton of Leighton Bromswold, he had six sons and three daughters: James Stuart, fourth duke of Lennox [q. v.]; Henry, who succeeded his father as eighth seigneur of Aubigny, and died in 1632; George, who succeeded his brother Henry as ninth seigneur of Aubigny, and, while commanding a body of three hundred horse which he had himself raised for King Charles, was killed at the battle of Edgehill on 23 Oct. 1642; Ludovick, who took possession of the seigneurie of Aubigny, in opposition to the rights of his nephew Charles [q. v.], was educated for the church, and became canon of Notre-Dame, accompanied Charles II to England at the Restoration, and died in Paris on 3 Nov. 1665, while a cardinal's hat was on its way to him from Rome; John (see below); Bernard, titular Earl of Lichfield [q. v.]; Elizabeth, married to Henry, earl of Arundel; Anne, to Archibald, earl of Angus; and Frances, to Jerome, earl of Portland.
The fifth son, John, according to Clarendon, ‘was a young man of extraordinary hope, of a more cholerick and rough nature than the other branches of that illustrious and princely family.’ He was present at Edgehill, 23 Oct. 1642, and accompanied Lord Forth's army in 1644 as general of the horse. In the cavalry charge at Cheriton on 29 March he behaved with conspicuous bravery, and was mortally wounded. He died at Abingdon on 3 April, and was buried at Christ Church, Oxford. There are portraits of the second duke at Cobham, at Longford Castle, and at Hampton Court.
T. F. H.