Aubrey Beauclerk, 5th Duke of St Albans

Aubrey Beauclerk, 5th Duke of St Albans (3 June 1740 – 9 February 1802), was a British peer and landowner, as well as a collector of antiquities and works of art.

Early life Born in 1740, the son of Admiral Vere Beauclerk, 1st Baron Vere (third son of Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St Albans), and Mary Chambers (eldest daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Chambers, son of Sir Thomas Chambers of Hanworth Park, Middlesex),

In 1779, Beauclerk financed an excavation with Thomas Jenkins at Centocelle, which discovered several ancient sculptures. To celebrate this successful excavation Beauclerk commissioned Franciszek Smuglewicz to paint a portrait of him and his family at the Roman site (a painting now at Cheltenham Art Gallery). Some sculptures were sold to Giovanni Battista Visconti for the Museo Pio-Clementino in the Vatican and others to the British art collector, Henry Blundell, with many being displayed at Beauclerk's Hanworth House by 1783. While in Italy Beauclerk also bought several paintings.

In 1781 when in Germany, Beauclerk succeeded his father as the 2nd Baron Vere, then in 1787, on the death of his unmarried cousin, as the 5th Duke of St Albans.

St Albans, disposing of some antiquities at sales in 1798 and 1801, was a major purchaser at the 1801 sale of his father-in-law's collection.

Personal life

On 4 May 1763 the Hon. Aubrey Beauclerk married Lady Catherine Ponsonby (1742–1789), elder daughter of the Anglo-Irish politician William Ponsonby, 2nd Earl of Bessborough, and Lady Caroline Cavendish (eldest daughter of William Cavendish, 3rd Duke of Devonshire).

Aubrey Beauclerk, 6th Duke of St Albans (1765–1815) William Beauclerk, 8th Duke of St Albans (1766–1825) Lady Catherine Elizabeth Beauclerk (–1803), who married the Revd James Burgess, Vicar of Hanworth, on 1 September 1802.