The Dukedom of Albemarle has been created twice in the Peerage of England, each time ending in extinction. Additionally, the title was created a third time by James II in exile and a fourth time by his son the Old Pretender, in the Jacobite Peerage. The name is the Latinised form of the ancient Norman Counts of Aumale of Aumale in Normandy. See also Earl of Albemarle.

Dukes of Albemarle, first Creation (1397)

Dukes of Albemarle, second Creation (1660)

Dukes of Albemarle, first Jacobite Creation (1696)

George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, KG (6 December 1608 – 3 January 1670) was an English soldier, politician and a key figure in effecting the Restoration of the Monarchy to King Charles II in 1660.

Origins

He was born on 6 December 1608 at the family estate of Potheridge in the parish of Merton, near Great Torrington, Devon, the second son of Sir Thomas Monck (1570–1627) MP for Camelford in 1626, a member of a Devon gentry family of ancient origin but then-straitened financial circumstances. Sir Thomas's wife and George's mother was Elizabeth Smith, a daughter by his first marriage of Sir George Smith (d. 1619) of Madworthy, near Exeter, Devon, a merchant who served as MP for Exeter in 1604, was three times Mayor of Exeter and the City of Exeter's richest citizen being lord of 25 surrounding manors. Elizabeth's sister Grace Smith was the wife of Sir Bevil Grenville (1596-1643), of Bideford in Devon and Stowe, Kilkhampton in Cornwall, the Royalist soldier killed in action during the Civil War in heroic circumstances at the Battle of Lansdowne in 1643. Sir Bevil's son and heir, and thus George Monck's first cousin, was John Grenville, 1st Earl of Bath (1628–1701), a fellow supporter of the Restoration, whose elevation to the peerage was largely due to Monck's influence.