Duke of St Albans
Title in the Peerage of England
Duke of St Albans is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1684 for Charles Beauclerk, 1st Earl of Burford, then 14 years old. King Charles II had accepted that Burford was his illegitimate son by Nell Gwyn, an actress, and awarded him the dukedom just as he had conferred those of Monmouth, Southampton, Grafton, Northumberland, and Richmond and Lennox on his other illegitimate sons who married.
The subsidiary titles of the Duke are Earl of Burford, in the County of Oxford (1676), Baron Heddington, in the same (1676) and Baron Vere, of Hanworth in the County of Middlesex (1750). The Earldom and the Barony of Heddington are in the Peerage of England, and the Barony of Vere is in the Peerage of Great Britain. The dukes hold the hereditary title of Grand Falconer of England, and until the end of the 18th century they were Hereditary Registrars of the Court of Chancery.
By tradition, the Earldom and Vere barony are used as courtesy titles by the duke's heir apparent and his heir apparent respectively.
The accepted pronunciation of Beauclerk is reflected in frequent early renderings Beauclaire: .
Estates and residences
Country seats
Until the 20th century, the country seats of the dukes of St Albans included Bestwood Lodge in Nottinghamshire, which was given to the 1st Duke's mother, the celebrated actress and mistress to Charles II, Nell Gwyn, as well as Redbourne Hall near Redbourne, Lincolnshire.
William Beauclerk, 10th Duke of St Albans made Bestwood his principal residence in 1849, and oversaw the construction of the current house on the site of a former hunting lodge during 1862-1865.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1968113. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1684, 1676, 1750 and 1849.
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This entry incorporates text from “Duke of St Albans” 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.