2nd Duke of Lennox 2nd Duke of Aubigny (France) 2nd Earl of March 2nd Earl of Darnley 2nd Baron Settrington 2nd Lord Torbolton Hereditary Constable of Inverness Castle
Lennox was styled Earl of March from his birth in 1701 as heir to his father's dukedom.[1] He also inherited his father's love of sports, particularly cricket.[2] He had a serious accident at the age of 12 when he was thrown from a horse during a hunt, but he recovered and it did not deter him from horsemanship.[3]
March entered into an arranged marriage in December 1719 when he was still only 18 and his bride, Hon. Sarah Cadogan, was just 13, in order to use Sarah's large dowry to pay his considerable debts. Dowry and debt were due to a sum won by her father in play against his father. They were married at The Hague.[4][5]
In 1722, March became Member of Parliament for Chichester as first member with Sir Thomas Miller as his second. He gave up his seat after his father died in May 1723 and he succeeded to the title of 2nd Duke of Richmond. A feature of Richmond's career was the support he received from his wife, Sarah, her interest being evident in surviving letters. Their marriage was a great success, especially by Georgian standards.
The Duke has been described as early cricket's greatest patron.[7] Although he had played cricket as a boy, his real involvement began after he succeeded to the dukedom.[8] He captained his own team and his players included some of the earliest known professionals, such as his groom Thomas Waymark. Later, when he patronised Slindon Cricket Club, Richmond was associated with the Newland brothers. His earliest recorded match is the one against Sir William Gage's XI on 20 July 1725, which is mentioned in a surviving letter from Sir William to the Duke[9][10]
Records have survived of four matches played by Richmond's team in the 1727 season. Two were against Gage's XI and two against an XI raised by the Surrey patron Alan Brodrick[11] These last two games are highly significant because Richmond and Brodrick drew up Articles of Agreement beforehand to determine the rules that must apply in their contests. These were itemised in sixteen points.[8] It is believed that this was the first time that rules (or some part of the rules as in this case) were formally agreed upon, although rules as such definitely existed. The first full codification of the Laws of Cricket was done in 1744. In early times, the rules would be agreed upon orally and were subject to local variations; this syndrome was also evident in football until the FA was founded, especially regarding the question of handling the ball. Essentially the articles of agreement focused on residential qualifications and ensuring that there was no dissent by any player other than the two captains.[8]
In 1728, Richmond's Sussex played twice against Edwin Stead's Kent and lost both matches, "(Kent's) men have been too expert for those of Sussex".[12] In 1730, Richmond's team played two matches against Gage's XI and another match against a Surrey XI backed by a Mr Andrews of Sunbury. Richmond lost to Andrews.[13] The second of his matches against Gage, due to be played at The Dripping Pan, near Lewes, was "put off on account of Waymark, the Duke's man, being ill".[14]
In 1731, Richmond was involved in one of the most controversial matches recorded in the early history of cricket. On 16 August, his Sussex team played a Middlesex XI backed by one Thomas Chambers at an unspecified venue in Chichester. Chambers' team won this match, which had a prize of 100 guineas, and a return was arranged to take place at Richmond Green on 23 August.[15] The return match was played for 200 guineas and it is notable as the earliest match of which the team scores are known: Richmond's XI 79, Chambers' XI 119; Richmond's XI 72, Chambers' XI 23–5 (approx.). The game ended promptly at a pre-agreed time although Chambers' XI with "four or five more to have come in" and needing "about 8 to 10 notches" clearly had the upper hand. The result caused a fracas among the crowd at Richmond Green, who were incensed by the prompt finish because the Duke of Richmond had arrived late and delayed the start of the game. The riot resulted in some of the Sussex players "having the shirts torn off their backs" and it was said "a law suit would commence about the play"[16] In a note about another match involving Chambers' XI in September, G. B. Buckley has recorded that Richmond may have conceded the result to Chambers, presumably to stop the threat of litigation.[17]
Richmond is not mentioned in cricket sources again for ten years. He may have stepped aside after the 1731 fracas but it is more likely that he terminated his Duke of Richmond's XI after he broke his leg in 1733 and could no longer play himself[18] Instead, he channelled his enthusiasm for cricket through a team from the small village of Slindon, which bordered on his Goodwood estate.[18]
Slindon
The rise to fame of Slindon Cricket Club was based on the play of Richard Newland and the patronage of Richmond. On Thursday, 9 July 1741, in a letter to her husband, the Duchess of Richmond mentions a conversation with John Newland regarding a Slindon v. East Dean match at Long Down, near Eartham, a week earlier. This is the earliest recorded mention of any of the Newland family[19] Then, on 28 July, Richmond sent two letters to the Duke of Newcastle to tell him about a game that day which had resulted in a brawl with "hearty blows" and "broken heads". The game was at Portslade between Slindon, who won, and unnamed opponents[20]
On Monday 7 September 1741, Slindon played Surrey at Merrow Down, near Guildford. Richmond, in a letter to the Duke of Newcastle before the game, spoke of "poor little Slyndon against almost your whole county of Surrey". Next day he wrote again, saying that "wee (sic) have beat Surrey almost in one innings"[21]
The Duchess wrote to him on Wednesday 9 September and said she "wish'd..... that the Sussex mobb (sic) had thrash'd the Surrey mob". She had "a grudge to those fellows ever since they mob'd you" (apparently a reference to the Richmond Green fiasco in August 1731). She then said she wished the Duke "had won more of their moneys"[22]
In 1744, Richmond created what is now the world's oldest known scorecard for the match between London and Slindon at the Artillery Ground on 2 June. Slindon won by 55 runs and the original scorecard is now among Richmond's papers in the possession of the West Sussex Records Office.[23]
In August 1745, Richmond backed a Sussex XI against Surrey in a match at Berry Hill, near Arundel. It appears that Surrey won the game in view of a comment made by Lord John Philip Sackville in a letter to Richmond dated Saturday 14 September: "I wish you had let Ridgeway play instead of your stopper behind it might have turned the match in our favour"[24]
Single wicket
When single wicket became the dominant form of cricket in the late 1740s, Richmond entered a number of teams mostly centred on Stephen Dingate, who was in his employ at the time. For example, a number of matches were played by a "threes" team of Dingate, Joseph Rudd and Pye. Richmond often found himself opposed by his former groom Thomas Waymark, still an outstanding player but now resident in Berkshire.[25]
Richmond died on 8 August 1750. He had been arguably the greatest of the game's early patrons, particularly of the Slindon club and of Sussex cricket in general. His death was followed by a slump in the fortunes of Sussex cricket, which featured few matches of significance until the rise of Brighton Cricket Club in the 1790s.
Richmond was one of the founding Governors of London's Foundling Hospital, which received its Royal Charter from George II in 1739. The Foundling Hospital was a charity dedicated to saving London's abandoned children. Both the Duke and the Duchess took great interest in the project. The Duke attended committee meetings and both took part in the baptism and naming of the first children accepted by the hospital in March 1741.
The 1740s was a turbulent time for Sussex. There was a rise in smuggling gangs; of these probably, the most violent was the notorious Hawkhurst Gang.[31]
The gang were responsible for the brutal murder of a bootmaker and a customs official.[32] Richmond decided to pursue those responsible with a vengeance. He began by petitioning the authorities so that a special assize could be held at Chichester.[33] He did not trust the local Justices (in West Sussex), as they could not be relied on to convict smugglers. He, therefore, obtained authorisation for judges to be brought down from London.[31] The judges (Sir Thomas Birch, Sir Michael Foster and Baron Clive) made their way under guard to Goodwood, where Richmond entertained them before the trial.[34] His campaign against the gang may have been because it was feared that the smugglers were assisting the Jacobites by providing intelligence to the French.[31]
All the culprits involved in the murder of the two men were captured and convicted.[31]
The duke's love of cricket was probably only eclipsed by his enthusiasm for wiping out smuggling in Sussex.[35] During Richmond's two-year campaign, against the illegal trade, thirty-five smugglers were executed and another ten died in gaol before they could be hanged. However, although his campaign managed to reduce the incidence of smuggling, it was reported by the writer Horace Walpole, in 1752 (after Richmond's death) that Sussex was "stiff" with smugglers.[31]
On a chapeau Gules turned up Ermine a lion statant guardant Or crowned with a Ducal Coronet Gules and gorged with a Collar compony of four pieces Argent and Gules charged with two roses of the last; (Richmond crest with Lennox collar and coronet).
Escutcheon
The Royal Arms of King Charles II of England (viz. quarterly: 1st and 4th, France and England quarterly; 2nd, Scotland; 3rd, Ireland); the whole within a Bordure compony Argent charged with Roses Gules barbed and seeded proper and the last.
Supporters
Dexter: A unicorn Argent armed, crined and unguled Or, gorged with a Collar company as the crest. Sinister: An antelope Argent, also armed, crined and unguled Or, gorged with a Collar company as the crest.
Motto
En la rose je fleuris (French: "Like the rose, I flourish")
^Dyndor Z. The Gibbet in the Landscape: Locating the Criminal Corpse in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England. In: Ward R, editor. A Global History of Execution and the Criminal Corpse. Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave Macmillan; 2015. Chapter 3. Accessdate 18 December 2018
Altham, H. S. (1962). A History of Cricket, Volume 1 (to 1914). George Allen & Unwin.
Carpenter, Audrey T (2011). John Theophilus Desaguliers: A Natural Philosopher, Engineer and Freemason in Newtonian England. Continuum. ISBN978-08264-3148-6.
Ashley-Cooper, F. S. (1900). At the Sign of the Wicket: Cricket 1742–1751. Cricket magazine.
Birley, Derek (1999). A Social History of English Cricket. Aurum.
Bowen, Rowland (1970). Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
Buckley, G. B. (1935). Fresh Light on 18th Century Cricket. Cotterell.
Green, Ken (2002). Chichester an Illustrated History. Derby: Breedon Books. ISBN1-85983-336-5.
Horowski, Leonhard (2017). Das Europa der Könige: Macht und Spiel an den Höfen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (in German). Rowohlt Verlag GmbH. ISBN978-3-49802-835-0.
Ingamells, John (2009). National Portrait Gallery Later Stuart Portraits, 1685-1714. London: National Portrait Gallery. ISBN978-1855-14410-1.
"Aristocrats". programmes. BBC. Based on a true story by Stella Tillyard, a chronicle of the turbulent lives of the Lennox sisters, daughters of the Duke of Richmond, in the eighteenth century.