William Villiers, 2nd Viscount Grandison (1614 – 23 September 1643) was an Irish peer and Royalist soldier who was fatally wounded during the First English Civil War in 1643.

[7] When the First English Civil War began in August 1642, Grandison raised a regiment of cavalry, which formed part of the Royalist left wing at Edgehill on 23 October.

During the fighting, Sir Edmund Verney was killed and the Royal Standard captured but then recovered by three men led by John Smith, an officer in Grandison's regiment.

After the Restoration, Grandison's only child, Barbara Villiers, became a royal mistress of King Charles II, in 1670 was created Duchess of Cleveland, and became the ancestor of several noble families, including the Dukes of Grafton.

[14][15] This painting was engraved about 1714 by Pieter van Gunst, who identified it as "William Villiers, Vicount Grandisson, Father to ye Late Duchesse of Cleaveland", with the attribution "A v. Dyk pinx".

[16] Theresa Lewis, in her Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon (1852), gives an unmistakable description of this portrait and reports that two copies of it then existed, one owned by the Duke of Grafton, a direct descendant of Grandison's, and the other by Earl Fitzwilliam.

[17] A similar but more sumptuous portrait of a young man, also known as Viscount Grandison, said to have belonged to George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, was at Stocks Park, Hertfordshire,[18] before being exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1893 as the property of Arthur Kay, Esq.