Duke of Grafton
Title in the Peerage of England

Duke of Grafton is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1675 by Charles II of England for Henry FitzRoy, his second illegitimate son by the Duchess of Cleveland. The most notable Duke of Grafton was Augustus FitzRoy, 3rd Duke of Grafton, who served as Prime Minister from 1768–1770.
The Duke of Grafton holds three subsidiary titles, all created in 1672 in the peerage of England: Earl of Euston, Viscount Ipswich, and Baron Sudbury. Between 1723 and 1936 the dukes, being descended from the 1st Duke's wife Isabella FitzRoy, 2nd Countess of Arlington, also held the titles Earl of Arlington, Viscount Thetford, and Baron Arlington. Those titles fell into abeyance between the 9th Duke's sisters, with the abeyance of the barony of Arlington ending in 1999.
The Dukes "created" and owned the London district of Fitzrovia, so named for their family name.
The title of the dukedom refers to the Honour of Grafton in the southeast of Northamptonshire, the titular village now being called Grafton Regis.
The Duke of Grafton is fourth in the order of precedence after the dukes of Norfolk, Somerset, and Richmond.
Estates
The family seat is Euston Hall in Suffolk, an 11,000-acre estate straddling the Norfolk-Suffolk border.
“Duke of Grafton” enters the record as title in the Peerage of England. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Duke, Grafton and Title can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Duke of Grafton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.