DANVERS alias VILLIERS, Robert (1624-75), of Wycombe, Bucks. and Knighton, Rad.

Following his illegitimate birth and his baptism under a borrowed name, the career of the man known in young adulthood as Robert Villiers, in middle age as Robert Danvers, and sometimes as Viscount Purbeck, was by turns obscure and notorious. In 1740 the vicar of St Giles, Cripplegate, reported that a previous incumbent had christened him as ‘Robert, son of John Wright, gentleman, of Bishopthorpe, Yorkshire … in the Garden House of Mr Manning at the upper end of White Street’; that entry exists in the parish register.16[T. Longueville], The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck (1909), 81–2; St Giles, Cripplegate, par. reg. The adultery of his parents, Sir Robert Howard* and Lady Purbeck, had come to light by January 1625, and for the next two and a half years they were embroiled in proceedings in the court of high commission. It seems that the infant Robert was at least partly brought up by his maternal grandmother, Lady Elizabeth Hatton, née Cecil, perhaps at Hatton House in Holborn.17CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 463, 471-2, 474, 476-9, 485, 497, 507; 1625-6, pp. 40, 437; 1627-8, p. 451; Curious Case of Lady Purbeck. Robert’s assertion in 1646 before the Committee for Compounding* that he had been taken overseas when only nine years old (that is in 1633) should be treated with caution, as should the impression given in some sources that both parents took him away for a Catholic education, perhaps under the name Howard.18CCC 1075. In defiance of the sentence of the ecclesiastical court, they were living together on Howard’s estates on the Welsh-Shropshire border in the early 1630s, but in April 1632 they were reported to have quarrelled violently, prompting Lady Purbeck to return to London.19Barrington Lttrs. 236. This merely drew attention to their prior cohabitation. Both were reincarcerated, until in the summer of 1635 Lady Purbeck escaped from the Gate House prison; her flight to France was allegedly in male disguise.20CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 178, 181, 190, 197, 202, 205; 1635-6, pp. 78, 217; CP. If her son joined her later when she was established in Paris, this went unremarked, but at some point he did become a Catholic and a period of foreign residence is very plausible; Mervin Touchet, son and namesake of the equally notorious 2nd earl of Castlehaven [I], and himself a Catholic, claimed to have known Robert in Italy, although this was contested.21CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 276, 322; 1636-7, pp. 59-60; CJ vii. 602b. Meanwhile Howard went to Dover, where his brother was governor and where he was not unnaturally suspected of intending to follow his lover, but ultimately he seems to have stayed behind and to have remained a Protestant, judging by his re-election to Parliament in 1640 and the compensation subsequently awarded for his sufferings before high commission.22‘Sir Robert Howard’, HP Commons 1604-1629.

According to Robert, it was his mother who compelled him to join the king’s army at the age of 18 (or 17), presumably soon after the outbreak of hostilities in 1642. Unless he had seen prior military service abroad (which is possible), his claim to have risen from private to colonel within two years is misleading.23CCC 1075. The commission as colonel to raise a regiment of foot, issued to ‘Robert Villiers’ by the king at Oxford on 15 June 1643, might have been, as he claimed, instigated and executed by his mother, but his father may also have promoted it: Sir Robert Howard attended the Oxford Parliament in 1643, and Lady Purbeck had established herself there some time before her death in the city in 1645.24Docquets Letters Patent, 47; CP. By October 1643 sufficient soldiers had been recruited for the regiment, quartered at Cowley, three miles south east of Oxford, to receive a sizeable consignment of muskets and pikes from the magazine at the Bodleian Library Schools.25Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, 113, 449. The soldiers were drawn from Shropshire and north Wales, where Villiers probably saw most of his service. Some sources give him as governor of Oswestry in 1643-4, but this is at odds with others which indicate first Edward Lloyd and then Sir Abraham Shipman in the post.26HP Commons 1660-1690; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. 2nd ser. iii. 99; vi. 144-8, 156-9, 167-9; x. 44; W.J. Farrow, The Great Civil War in Shropshire (1926), 48. Mervin Touchet, then a cavalry officer under Prince Rupert, remembered being quartered with him in Shropshire and later seeing him leading a regiment towards Bridgnorth, while Colonel Samuel More*, in 1645 parliamentarian governor of Monmouth Castle, recalled hearing that he had been with Sir Robert Howard in the Ludlow garrison.27Burton’s Diary, iii. 245-6; CJ vii. 602b. On his own telling, Villiers switched his allegiance to Parliament before the battle of Naseby (on 14 June).28CCC 1075. Perhaps he had been influenced by Sir Robert’s pessimism about royalist prospects, or liberated by Lady Purbeck’s death, shortly before 4 June.29‘Sir Robert Howard’ supra; CP. Colonel More thought he had taken the Negative Oath in that year, and in that belief gave him a pass to go to London to visit his dying grandmother, Lady Hatton.30Burton’s Diary, iii. 245-6.

By the end of the year Villiers had duly moved to the capital, thus taking the step which definitively cut him off from his previous allegiance. Lady Hatton died on 3 January 1646. Her will, made on 31 December 1645, named Villiers as residuary legatee and gave him a share in rooms and goods at Hatton House during the lifetime of his legal father, Viscount Purbeck. Evidently this was with the intention of giving him an independent home in the meantime, and in expectation of his being further provided for thereafter. The manor of Fakenham, Norfolk, his chief legacy, was vested in trustees – Denzil Holles*, Sir John Danvers* and Sir Christopher Wray* – who were also Lady Hatton’s executors. The fact that they did not obtain probate until May 1647 may go some way to explain why the property escaped the notice of the Committee for Compounding, before whom Villiers first appeared on 17 January 1646.31PROB11/200/312; ‘Lady Elizabeth Hatton’, Oxford DNB. The sequestrators seem to have thought that his stake in Lady Hatton’s estate was mainly confined to a reversionary interest after Purbeck’s death, either as his mother’s or his legal father’s heir (the latter having, despite all indications to the contrary, acknowledged Robert in some indentures as his son).32CJ iv. 461a, 508a; CCAM 669-70; CCC 1075; CP. They therefore scrutinised his possessions and expectations in Buckinghamshire, Essex and Yorkshire, land settled by Sir Edward Coke† and Lady Hatton at the Purbecks’ marriage, or purchased since.

It is plausible that, as later alleged, Danvers took the lead in organising the composition for which Villiers petitioned that spring, preparing the way by arranging his conversion to Protestantism. Certification that he had received the sacrament was given on to the Commons on 4 May 1646 by leading Presbyterian ministers Stephen Marshall, Herbert Palmer and Obadiah Sedgwick.33CCC 1075; Burton’s Diary, iii. 242-3; CJ iv. 534a. On 7 July the House accepted £1,126 from ‘Robert Villiers of London’ as a fine for delinquency, on the understanding that he had a landed income of £59 a year in possession and £1,060 in reversion.34CJ iv. 605a. It is clear that calculation was complicated, and although the Lords ordered on 4 July 1648 that Villiers be cleared of delinquency, further negotiation at Goldsmiths Hall ensued.35LJ x. 360b; CCC 1075-6. On 23 November that year Villiers married Danvers’ elder daughter Elizabeth, goddaughter and fellow legatee of Lady Hatton.36Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 97; Burke, Extinct Peerages, 558-9; PROB11/200/312. Part of her inheritance came from another delinquent, her uncle Henry Danvers, 1st earl of Danby, and Sir John’s indebted state cannot have supported a large dowry.37CCC 1075-6, 1639. Villiers was possibly glad to accept his patronage; Danvers’ motives are obscure.

According to Richard Knightley*, about 1648 Sir John mentioned to him a desire that Villiers command a regiment in Spain. Knightley’s reply, that sending him there was ‘an ill way of conversion’, apparently struck Danvers by its force, but other foreign travel and employment came his son-in-law’s way.38Burton’s Diary, iii. 242. Around the time of the king’s trial and execution people of different viewpoints later recalled that Robert was in London, enthusiastically proclaiming his support for proceedings, but on 14 October 1650 he obtained a pass to go beyond the seas.39Burton’s Diary, iii. 252; LJ xi. 65a, b; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 653. If John Aubrey is correct that his second daughter was born in November 1651, he must have been back in England within a few months.40Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 97. A further pass, this time extending to a servant and necessaries, was issued on 12 January 1652, with Flanders as the specified destination.41CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 548. Sir Edward Hyde* wrote to a fellow royalist from Paris on 31 May that Lady Purbeck’s son had been there negotiating with the French king. He had been arrested, but released once the government announced that he was an official envoy; subsequently he and a reciprocal agent, Chantillet, had left for England.42CCSP ii.135. Robert himself claimed in 1659 that ‘under his Highness’ (that is, during the protectorate) there was a plan to send him to Ireland, ‘listed under Colonel Martin … [with] a troop of horse’.43Burton’s Diary, iii. 247.

If real, this scheme may have faltered as Villiers’ prospects in England seemed to improve. By the time he died in April 1653, Sir Robert Howard had legitimate heirs. However, it must have been Howard who left to Robert, as his eldest son, property near Clun at Siluria, Radnorshire.44Burke, Extinct Peerages, 559; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 425. It is doubtful that Robert was resident there at this date: a major pull was probably the cultivated Danvers circle at Chelsea. In July 1654 the physician Walter Charlton dedicated to Elizabeth Danvers/Villiers from London his Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltonia, or a fabric of science natural upon the hypothesis of atoms, composed at her house. ‘Two singular friends’, Robert and Elizabeth, a lady of apparently superior understanding, linguistic ability and tolerance of oft-vented philosophical discourse, lived in ‘the chief mansion of well-ordered hospitality’, plausibly nearer to London than to Wales.45W. Charlton, Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltonia (1654), A3. The successive deaths of Elizabeth’s brother Henry that November, and of her father in April 1655, led to a division of the Danvers inheritance between her and her younger sister Anne, who shortly afterwards married Sir Henry Lee*. Although encumbered, the Danvers estates were extensive; the Danvers/Villiers’ share included (until alienated to the Lees in 1659) the major country seat at West Lavington, Wiltshire.46PROB11/246/26; VCH Wilts. vii. 200, viii. 150, ix. 95, x. 139, xiv. 122, 139, 142. On the strength of this windfall, and in the context of positive reports of county commissioners of his loyalty to the regime which were sufficient to exempt him from the 1655 decimation tax, Villiers applied for a patent to assume the name and arms of the Danvers family.47CCC 1076. To the chagrin of Danvers’ widow, in 1656 the protector granted the request; her complaints, referred to a hearing in January 1657 appear to have gone unresolved, and henceforward Villiers became known principally as Danvers.48CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 215.

While there are difficulties in extrapolating backwards from Danvers’ later statements, it seems that even in 1656 this change was intended to represent a repudiation of his Villiers and royalist links.49Burton’s Diary, iii. 241-2. In claiming his wife’s share of the earl of Danby’s estate in 1649 he had described himself as son and heir of Lord Purbeck.50CCC 1639. This position was now set aside. Purbeck’s will, drawn up on 29 August 1655, made no mention of him, an omission which may substantiate Robert’s subsequent assertion that he did not receive a share in the Villiers inheritance.51PROB11/274/560; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 399. Meanwhile, it left unaffected his right to the Coke-Hatton inheritance once Purbeck died in February 1658.52CP.

Having sold his expectations in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, in 1656, Danvers appears to have been living for some time in High Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe when late in 1658 he launched his election campaign for the last protectorate Parliament.53VCH Bucks. iii. 306-7; Burton’s Diary, iii. 244. Westbury, for which he was returned with William Eyre II*, was a Danvers manor.54VCH Wilts. viii. 150. According to Thomas Grove*, Member for Marlborough, Danvers arrived in the Wiltshire constituency a month before the election and ‘made the electors drunk every day with sack’, spending £100.55Burton’s Diary, iii. 243. Grove was not necessarily a disinterested witness, however. In the context of an influx of new Wiltshire MPs, of whom Danvers’ brother-in-law Sir Henry Lee was one, initially Danvers’ presence in the House went unquestioned. Thomas Burton noted that during the debate on the office of chief magistrate on 8 February 1659 he spoke up in favour of giving as many Members as possible a voice, and according to Wiltshireman Edmund Ludlowe II*, Danvers voted on his side in divisions.56Burton’s Diary, iii. 150; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 56. But it was this, Ludlowe maintained, which then prompted their opponents to challenge his right to sit in the House.57Ludlow, Mems. ii. 56. On 12 February, as the Commons were considering whether former delinquents might sit, Griffith Bodurda* and Samuel Ashe*, Member for the Wiltshire seat of Heytesbury, introduced pointedly the slippery name of Danvers or Villiers.58Burton’s Diary, iii. 241; CJ vii. 602b.

As recounted and mediated by Burton, the ensuing discussion revealed not only MPs’ divergent attitudes to royalist compounders but also their apparent preference for reliance on hazy memory of previous decades over the not unreasonable proposal of Sir Arthur Hesilrige* to refer to the written record to resolve uncertainties.59Burton’s Diary, iii. 243. However, Danvers’ own attempt to disavow his military past and to distance himself from the composition made on his behalf by his father-in-law clearly confused the issue, undermined the efforts of fair-minded colleagues prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and left an unpleasant taste in some MPs’ mouths. Various Members who had encountered him vouched for him in some measure. William Cartwright*, whose precise connection is unknown, had ‘known him a long time that he has lived here’ and was, like the scrupulous Presbyterian Henry Hungerford*, Member for Great Bedwyn, inclined to be indulgent on account of his youth when in alleged royal service.60Burton’s Diary, iii. 245, 247. Samuel More’s account of his 1645 submission has been mentioned. Thomas Scot I*, who sat for Chipping Wycombe, had ‘been 20 times in his company, and heard him strongly defend the Parliament’s cause … He was always your zealous champion’. His Westbury partner William Eyre II, a native of Danvers country theoretically well-placed to know, apparently concurred, testifying to the completeness of his conversion from royalism. In their acquaintance before the regicide, Eyre ‘never knew any man, in all his discourses, fly so highly in the king’s face’; indeed, he had ‘heard him say, rather than execution be not done upon him, he would do it himself, calling him a traitor, tyrant, and the like’.61Burton’s Diary, iii. 252. Former Major-general William Packer*, who had dealt with his composition in Buckinghamshire, bore witness to his discharge, his desire to shed the ‘infamous’ name of Villiers, and an offer of money for the service of the protectorate, while Major-general Tobias Bridge* had received ‘several certificates as to his reformation’.62Burton’s Diary, iii. 244, 245, 247; CCC 1076.

Danvers admitted questioning by the major-generals and affirmed his discharge. However, he ‘flatly’ denied delinquency (despite any ‘stories’ Sir John Danvers might have told to Richard Knightley* and others) and even ‘ever’ being ‘at the head of a regiment’; he ‘never had a command’; it was his mother who ‘was violent that way’.63Burton’s Diary, iii. 241-2, 247. Bridge’s report that ‘he affirmed that one Villiers had a regiment, but that Danvers had it he denied’ manifestly struck some hearers as an instance of his casuistry.64Burton’s Diary, iii. 245. Mervin Touchet’s testimony was heard by the House only after doubt was expressed as to whether a Catholic witness might be admissible or trustworthy, so Danvers’ assertion that he had never seen Touchet ‘to my knowledge’ may have been easier to swallow, but his attempts to shift blame for his youthful conduct onto other family members stuck in the throat of MPs like Carew Ralegh* and even Ludlowe.65Burton’s Diary, iii. 242, 247. Thomas Grove’s allegations of bribery in electioneering hardly uncovered an unprecedented offence, and may have been seen as coming from a conservative Presbyterian with a local axe to grind.66Burton’s Diary, iii. 243. More insidious, perhaps, was the contribution of John Humfrey*, Member for Bridgnorth: he had just received a letter from the minister of Wycombe complaining that Danvers had never attended church, but ‘frequented a private meeting, being a cavalier’; escaping decimation had been the act of ‘a jesuited fellow’ who, once safe, ‘presently scowled and derided you’.67Burton’s Diary, iii. 244.

A conviction that Danvers had lied to the House underpinned calls that he be not only expelled (Ludlowe’s position), but also fined and (according to hardline opponents like Bodurda and Robert Reynolds*) imprisoned in the Tower.68Burton’s Diary, iii. 243-51. ‘This is the first time that ever I heard a gentleman deal so notoriously disingenuously with you’ was reportedly Sir Arthur Hesilrige’s prefatory exclamation before moving to the latter effect.69Burton’s Diary, iii. 244. The motion on the same day (12 Feb.), that ‘Robert Villiers returned by the name of Robert Danvers’ be excluded permanently for delinquency was finally carried without a vote, but there was a division on imprisonment. Despite the double rejection of his rehabilitation implied in the nomenclature, the counsel of Members like John Okey* and John Sadler* for a measure of mercy prevailed: while Sir William Wheler*, an erstwhile Member for Westbury with his own past to bury, and Nicholas Pedley* led a substantial minority (112) for sending him to the Tower, Major-general Packer and Thomas Beaumont* told for a respectable majority (145) against it.70Burton’s Diary, iii. 252-3; CJ vii. 602b, 603a.

At the Restoration Danvers clung obstinately to a new identity which became as dangerous as his old one. Returned to the Convention as MP for Malmesbury, a Danvers manor, he soon ran into trouble. Sir Edward Dering† noted in his diary that on 14 May 1660 ‘Robert Danvers, alias Villiers, alias Lord Purbeck’ was summoned to answer the claim that ‘he had moved Colonel Eyres to speak to Oliver Cromwell that he the said Villiers might do execution upon the king, which Colonel Eyres had said in the last Parliament’.71Dering Diaries and Pprs. 43; CJ viii. 25-6. In its first clause this accusation went one step beyond William Eyre II’s testimony in 1659 as recorded by Burton; it may have been partly a bi-product of the general confusion in 1660 over the different roles of the three men who could be designated as Colonel Eyre (William II, William the Leveller and Thomas*, who was probably the closest to Cromwell).72‘William Eyre (fl. 1634-1675)’, Oxford DNB. The charge collapsed, but only to re-emerge a month later.

On 15 June Danvers was summoned to the Lords to answer as Viscount Purbeck.73LJ xi. 58b, 64b. Brought by Black Rod the next day, he was confronted with information from new accusers. Henry Carey, 2nd earl of Monmouth (also a landowner in both Buckinghamshire and Wales), had heard his offer to decapitate Charles I; William Petre, 4th Baron Petre (a Catholic royalist who had none the less attended the king’s trial) heard him say there that the presiding judge John Bradshawe* was ‘the preserver of our liberties’, whom ‘he hoped … would do justice upon the tyrant’; an unnamed person retailed his remarks in the 1659 debate that he had never borne arms for Charles Stuart because he ‘so much hated him and his cause’ as well as the name Villiers. Novel, and damaging in its precision, was the recollection of one John Harris that on 17 December 1649 at Monmouth’s house in Queen Street, London, he had made ‘atheistical speeches’ denying the immortality of the soul, ‘scoffing’ at the last judgement, mocking to her face the beliefs of Monmouth’s sister Philadelphia, Lady Wharton, and daring God ‘to maintain his own quarrel’. Treason and blasphemy were grave offences, and Danvers requested time to take counsel. In the meantime, however, he declined to take his seat as a peer. The honour was ‘but a shadow, without substance’; his estate was too small to maintain that rank; the Villiers family had never acknowledged him, financially or otherwise.74LJ xi. 65a, b, 66a.

Returned to the custody of Black Rod, Danvers was reported to have answered, in response to a private question as to his parentage, that he was ‘son to the lady that married Lord Purbeck’.75HMC 5th Rep. 150, 154, 168. This carried an implied repudiation of being also the son of her husband, but public acknowledgement of his illegitimate birth, hitherto apparently current, seems to have dissolved. Danvers’ demeanour was offensive: his serious crimes were compounded by his ‘degenerous and infamous desires … to divest himself of all title of honour’.76HMC 7th Rep. 126-7. All the same, his punishment was ultimately light, suggesting that he had friends behind the scenes. His application for bail on the grounds of ill health (14 July) was agreed on 27 July; on 10 September there was an order for his release on bond of £10,000.77LJ xi. 91a, 107b, 166b, 167a. At some point in the autumn the reapplication of ‘Robert and Elizabeth Villiers’ to renounce the viscounty and adopt the name Danvers was accepted, although the licence was delayed until March 1662.78CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 399; 1661-2, p. 320; Eg. 2549, f. 39. However, serious allegations about him continued to circulate, and on 27 December, when he was living in Knighton, he entered a bond of £5,000 not to act against the government.79CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 419, 425, 477.

The remainder of Danvers’ life was dogged by debt and suspicion. The family name was now associated with regicide, and Sir John Danvers’ estates were forfeit by Act of Parliament.80CJ viii. 28b, 61; Wilts. RO, 9/26/3. Less well-placed to protect his inheritance than the dowager countess of Rochester, guardian of the Lee heirs, Robert was also vulnerable to confusion by the crown and its informers with the anabaptist Henry Danvers II* of Leicestershire. Whatever the extent to which, if at all, he actually engaged in radical plotting, he spent at least one further period in prison.81CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 652-3; 1667, p. 463; 1671, p. 283; HP Commons 1660-1690; ‘Robert Danvers (1624-1675)’, ‘Henry Danvers (b. in or before 1619, d. 1687/8’, Oxford DNB. He retained sufficient standing in some quarters to be elected in 1668 as a freeman of Chipping Wycombe, and his three surviving daughters made respectable marriages, but financial problems appear finally to have overwhelmed him.82First Ledger Book of High Wycombe, 185. In 1674 Danvers was reported, ‘in one of his fits’, to have ‘gone into Holland’, owing ‘much money in town’.83Norf. RO, MC 107/1, no. 57. He died at Calais the next year; his burial in the church of Notre Dame has been taken as an indication of his reversion to Catholicism. His widow, who obtained administration of his will in 1676, again laid claim to the Purbeck title, as did her sons, but none of Danvers’ heirs sat in either House.84CP; Burke, Extinct Peerages; ‘Robert Danvers’, Oxford DNB; HP Commons 1660-1690;