Name Robert 3rd | ||
Robert Leke, 3rd Earl of Scarsdale (9 March 1654 – 27 December 1707) was an English politician and courtier, styled Lord Deincourt from 1655 to 1681.
Life
Deincourt was the eldest son of Nicholas Leke, 2nd Earl of Scarsdale and his wife, Frances, the third daughter of Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick. On 11 February 1672, Deincourt married Mary Lewis (1658–1684), the second daughter and coheiress of Sir John Lewis, 1st Baronet.
Deincourt served as the Captain of the Honourable Band of Gentlemen Pensioners from 1677 to 1682, and as a captain in Lord Gerard's Regiment of Horse from 1678 to 1679. He was briefly Member of Parliament for Newark in 1679 and called to the House of Lords in his father's barony of Deincourt of Sutton in 1680. A few months later he inherited his father's earldom of Scarsdale.
Scarsdale was Lord Lieutenant of Derbyshire from 1684 to 1687, Colonel of The Princess Anne of Denmark's Regiment of Horse and Groom of the Stole to Prince George of Denmark from 1685 to 1687.
Scarsdale had Jacobite sympathies; in other words he supported the exiled Stuarts. Among other demonstrations of this, he was one of only five peers to formally protest in the House of Lords Journal against the passing of the Act of Settlement (1701), an act which confirmed the Stuarts' exclusion from the throne [Journals of the House of Lords, vol.16, p. 699, May 1701].
Scarsdale died childless in 1707 and his titles passed to his nephew, Nicholas.