Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond

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 among others Craigmillar Castle in the late 16th and early 17th century. Richard (the younger) was placed as a page at the King's court in Edinburgh.[1]

King James I and IV of Scotland and England 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. Lennox had to leave for France after the Raid of Ruthven in 1582.[3]

Richard, the page, gained the king's favour and was made a groom of the privy chamber.[4] 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 30 July 1603. In 1607 Richard was appointed constable of Dingwall Castle.[5] He bought the barony of Dingwall and on 8 June 1609 the King made him Lord Dingwall.[6] In London the King met in 1608 Robert Carr who became his favourite and seems to have supplanted the Lord Dingwall, as he was now, in that role.

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.[7] 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.[8] Black Tom died soon after the marriage on 22 November 1614.[9] An only child was born of this marriage:

• Elizabeth (1615–1684), married James Butler and became Duchess of Ormond.[10]

On 19 July 1619 Lord Dingwall was created the 1st Earl of Desmond in the third creation of that title.[11] In its first creation, the Earldom of Desmond had been held by the Hiberno-Norman FitzGerald dynasty. After the failure of the Second Desmond Rebellion against Queen Elizabeth I of England, the Geraldine earldom was forfeited to the Crown in 1582 and all its heirs attainted. The title was created for the second time for James Fitzgerald – a pathetic creature of the Crown who died penniless and without issue. After Richard Preston's death, the third creation became extinct in its turn. A fourth creation of the title passed to the family of the Earls of Denbigh.

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.[12]

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.[13]

His wife, Elizabeth Butler died on 10 October 1628 in Wales.[14] On 28 October 1628 Lord Desmond was drowned on a passage between Dublin and Holyhead.[15][16]

• Carte, Thomas (1851), The Life of James Duke of Ormond, 1 (new ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press - 1613–1641
• Cokayne, George Edward (1890), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 3 (1st ed.), London: George Bell and Sons – D to F (for Desmond)
• Cokayne, George Edward (1895), The complete peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, extant, extinct, or dormant, 6 (1st ed.), London: George Bell and Sons – 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
• Dunboyne, Patrick Theobald Tower Butler, Baron (1968), Butler Family History (2nd ed.), Kilkenny: Rothe House
• Lodge, John (1789), The Peerage of Ireland, 4, Dublin: James Moore - 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, 3, Edinburgh: David Douglas – 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, 5, Edinburgh: David Douglas – Innermeath to Mar (for Lennox)
• Smyth, Constantine (1839), Chronicle of the Law Officers of Ireland, London: Henry Butterworth (for Table of reigns)
• Webb, Alfred (1878), "Desmond, John", Compendium of Irish Biography, Dublin: M. H. Gill & Son, pp. 146, left column

• Genealogy of Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond on The Peerage website