Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury

Who was Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury?

Francis Talbot, 11th Earl of Shrewsbury, 11th Earl of Waterford was an English peer, the second son of the 10th Earl of Shrewsbury.

Talbot was a Captain in the royalist armies during the English Civil War and fought at the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Following the royalist defeat there he fled abroad to Europe but returned to England before February 1653/54, the month he succeeded to his father's earldom, when he petitioned the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, to pardon him for all offences against Parliament. He was suspected of complicity in the unsuccessful royalist rising by Sir George Booth in August 1659 in the period between Cromwell's death and the restoration of King Charles II in 1660.

Shrewsbury was readily employed in Charles' court. He bore the Second Sword at the king's coronation in 1661, and in the same year was made Lord Housekeeper of Hampton Court and Treasurer and Receiver-General of Ireland.

After his first wife and two young sons had died, Shrewsbury married Lady Anna Maria Brudenell, a daughter of the 2nd Earl of Cardigan, on 10 January 1658. On 16 January 1668, he duelled with his wife's lover, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and was mortally wounded, dying two months later. He was buried at the parish church of Albrighton in Shropshire. Samuel Pepys said: