Albemarle

Albemarle, the English form of Aumale (q.v.), in Normandy, whose first earl, Odo, received from his brother-in-law, William the Conqueror, the lordship of the Isle of Holderness, in Yorkshire. Both lordship and title reverted to the crown in the reign of Henry III.; and four times subsequently was the dukedom of Albemarle conferred on four different persons—e.g. in 1423 on Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and in 1660 on his soi-disant descendant, General Monk (q.v.). It expired with his son in 1688; and in 1696, the title of Earl of Albemarle was granted to Arnold Joost van Keppel (1669–1718), a devoted follower of William III. Among his descendants have been William, second earl (1732–54), soldier and diplomatist; George, third earl (1724–72), who captured Havana; and George Thomas Keppel, sixth earl (1799–1891), who fought at Waterloo, and rose to be a general in 1874. Of several works by him, the most interesting is Fifty Years of my Life (1876).