The ducal title, with accompanying grant of arms and of lands, were an attempt by Charles II to place his youngest illegitimate son into the persona of his much beloved and recently extinct Franco-Scottish cousins, the Stewart Seigneurs d'Aubigny, the last in the male line of whom was Charles Stewart, 3rd Duke of Richmond, 6th Duke of Lennox (1639–1672) of Cobham Hall in Kent and of Richmond House in London.

During the Auld Alliance between the Kingdom of Scotland and the Ancien Régime of France, the Château d'Aubigny had been granted in 1422 by King Charles VII of France to Sir John Stewart of Darnley, 1st Comte d'Évreux, 1st Seigneur de Concressault, 1st Seigneur d'Aubigny (c. 1380–1429), a famous military commander who served as Constable of the Scottish Army in France, supporting the French against the English during the Hundred Years War, and a fourth cousin[1] of King James I of Scotland (reigned 1406 to 1437), the third monarch of the House of Stewart.

The first ducal holder was Louise de Kérouaille, the French-born last mistress of King Charles II of England and Scotland.

In 1684, at the request of Charles II, the French King Louis XIV created her "Duchess of Aubigny" in the Peerage of France.

[2] This was in the form of the royal French arms differenced by a bordure gules charged with buckles or, specified to appear in the 1st and 4th quarters of greatest honour.