James Ley, 3rd Earl of Marlborough (28 January 1618 – 3 June 1665) was an English peer, naval admiral and coloniser, and Member of Parliament.
[2] Marlborough was General of Ordnance in the West for Charles I in 1643, during the English Civil War, and later in the year was appointed Admiral of the Royal fleet at Dartmouth.
After the Restoration, in late 1661, he was given command of HMS Dunkirk and sent out as commodore of a squadron to claim Bombay, which had been ceded to England as the dowry of Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to the English king, Charles II.
However, the Portuguese were able to stall the handover by a variety of pretexts, and Marlborough was obliged to land the garrison troops sent with him on Anjadip Island and return home with his ships.
He was in 1664 nominated as the next Governor of Jamaica but was shortly afterwards given command of the 70-gun second-rate Old James and was killed in 1665 at the Battle of Lowestoft while attempting to recover a captured ship.