Duke of Richard Plantagenet Temple Nugent Brydges Chandos Grenville Buckingham and Chandos

Born on 11 February 1797, the 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos was the only son of the 1st Duke and grew up at the family seat of Stowe. Before inheriting the dukedom in 1839, he was known by the courtesy titles Viscount Cobham, Earl Temple, and Marquess of Chandos. He was educated at Eton and at Oriel College, Oxford, and entered political life as a Tory.

He served in Parliament and later held office as Lord Privy Seal in 1841–1842. Alongside his political career, he was one of the great landowners of his day, but the vast Buckingham and Chandos estates were burdened by serious financial problems. The scale of his spending and debt became notorious, and Stowe itself was eventually sold, turning his story into one of the most dramatic aristocratic downfalls of 19th-century Britain.

He died on 29 July 1861. Today he is remembered less for a single political achievement than for the contrast between immense inherited splendour and the fragile reality behind it.