DORMER, Robert (1551-1616)

Dormer’s forbears were wealthy wool merchants who invested their profits in land, and entered the ranks of the gentry. By the early seventeenth century, the family’s estates in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire comprised around 30,000 acres, including their principal seat of Ascott House. Dormer’s grandfather served three times as sheriff of these two counties, while his father, Sir William, who also twice held the shrievalty, represented Buckinghamshire in Parliament on three occasions.23 Trappes-Lomax, 175; Collins, Peerage, vii. 66-8; List of Sheriffs, 3. A staunch Catholic, and created a knight of the Bath at Mary Tudor’s coronation, Sir William married one of his daughters to a Spanish attendant of King Philip, the duke of Feria. Nevertheless, when Elizabeth I restored Protestantism, Sir William publicly conformed, thereby securing unofficial toleration of his private beliefs.24 Shaw, i. 153; Lipscomb, iii. 530. It was a delicate balancing act. Named by government informers as a supporter of Mary, queen of Scots, Sir William married most of his children into other Catholic families, but was also on close terms with the puritan Francis Russell^†, 2nd earl of Bedford, and was accordingly viewed with suspicion by the more hard-line recusants.25 M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern Eng. 75; Lipscomb, 532.

Dormer himself successfully continued this pattern of divided loyalties. Married to the daughter of another prominent Catholic, Anthony Browne^†, 1st Viscount Montagu, he made Ascott a safe haven for a succession of Catholic priests, including the much-hunted Edmund Campion.26 Questier, 187; CSP Dom. 1591-4, pp. 372, 380; Trappes-Lomax, 178-9. Nevertheless, he was perfectly prepared, as a magistrate and sheriff, to enforce the oath of supremacy and collect recusancy fines. He also sat in the Commons, from which Catholics were theoretically barred, with the help of the earl of Bedford, who had him returned for the Cornish borough of Tregony in 1571.27 HP Commons 1558-1603, ii. 49; CSP Dom. 1581-90, pp. 275, 285; APC, 1592, p. 256. Moreover, his family’s wealth led to some very advantageous marriage alliances, and by the end of Elizabeth’s reign his kinship circle included Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham, Oliver St John^*, 3rd Lord St John, William Herbert^*, 3rd earl of Pembroke, and Robert Sidney^*, soon to be Lord Sydney, and later 1st earl of Leicester. From about 1600 Dormer himself enjoyed an office at court, as hereditary master of the royal hawks.28 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 429; Letters and Memorials of State ed. A. Collins, ii. 215.

In March 1603, with the queen’s death now imminent, Dormer wrote to Sir Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury) assuring him of his loyalty. He retained his role at court under James I, and presumably enjoyed some personal contact with the king, who was famously obsessed with hunting. He also became a junior member of Anne of Denmark’s council in October 1603, with oversight of her jointure lands in Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire and Berkshire.29 HMC Hatfield, xii. 699-700; Questier, 265; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, iii. 209. In 1608 Dormer was appointed a deputy lieutenant in his home county, serving under the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley). This significant mark of official approval effectively confirmed that he continued to enjoy the government’s confidence, even though by now he was sending his sons to the Continent, where they openly practised their Catholic faith, and visited Rome.30 HEH, EL1692; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 404; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 25; J. Stoye, Eng. Travellers Abroad, 80.

The idea that Dormer should become a peer was first suggested in September 1603 by an English spy, Thomas Morgan, who apparently communicated to James the wishes of Dormer’s aunt, the duchess of Feria. The proposal initially fell on deaf ears, but Morgan’s claim that Dormer was wealthy enough to support an earldom was perhaps recalled in 1611, when he was instead approached to purchase a baronetcy. In the event, he turned down this offer, possibly because he was then in the middle of a major property investment.31 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, pp. 429-30; C193/6/255; P. Croft, ‘The Catholic Gentry, the Earl of Salisbury and the Bts. of 1611’, Conformity and Orthodoxy in the Eng. Church ed. P. Lake and M. Questier, 278; Trappes-Lomax, 186. Around the same time, he was also drawn into the financial affairs of his nephew, Anthony Maria Browne^*, 2nd Viscount Montagu, who had just incurred a £6,000 fine for refusing the oath of supremacy. Dormer was party to a settlement of Montagu’s estates which later became the subject of a bitter dispute, and generated legislation in the 1621 and 1624 parliaments, though his own conduct was not called into question.32 Questier, 359; LC4/31/232; CD 1621, iii. 236; iv. 89; CJ, i. 724b; LJ, iii. 248a.

Now entering his seventh decade, Dormer entertained Anne of Denmark at Ascott House in 1612, and continued to perform minor administrative tasks over the next few years. However, his career seemed to have peaked. Then, without warning, word spread in May 1615 that he was about to become a peer. Edmund Sheffield^*, 3rd Lord Sheffield (later 1st earl of Mulgrave) had procured from the king the right of nomination to a barony, which Dormer agreed to buy, either for £8,000 or £10,000. This was the first time that a peerage had been openly sold in this fashion, and the fact that the proceeds went into a private purse did nothing to render the deal more palatable to observers. As the newsletter-writer John Chamberlain recorded in June: ‘this manner of making barons is subject to the censure of wanton wits, that say baronies were wont to be given by entail, but now they go by bargain and sale’. Dormer’s Catholic connections also contributed to the pronounced public backlash.33 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 374, 601-2, 604; Holles Letters ed. P.R. Seddon (Thoroton Soc. xxxi), 70; Carew Letters ed. J. Maclean (Cam. Soc. lxxvi), 13; C.R. Mayes, ‘Sale of Peerages in Early Stuart Eng.’, JMH, xxix. 22-3. There was a last-minute hitch when Sir Robert Cotton^‡ pointed out that in 1611 James had agreed henceforth to bestow new baronies only on members of existing aristocratic families, or on baronets. As Dormer fell into neither category, Cotton argued that granting him a peerage would undermine the sale of future baronetcies. Accordingly Dormer was prevailed upon to become a baronet first, but he understandably quibbled over the additional expense, and the normal fee was apparently waived. Created a baronet on 10 June, he was advanced to a barony 20 days later, appropriately with Lord Sheffield as one of his supporters.34 Harl. 7002, f. 380; Chamberlain Letters, i. 602; SO3/6, unfol. (June 1615); Harl. 5176, f. 221v. Dormer’s name was omitted from a list of Bucks. residents who purchased baronetcies around this time: Barnsley Archives and Local Studs., EM 1284(a). Croft mistakenly claims that Cotton objected to Dormer becoming a baronet: Croft, 278.

In his new capacity, Dormer participated in the trial of the earl of Somerset in April 1616, but he had little time to enjoy his elevated status.35 APC, 1615-16, p. 505; HMC Downshire, v. 510. ‘Diseased in body’ when he made his will on 16 Nov. following, he requested a simple funeral, so that more money would be available for distribution to the poor. His eldest son William having died only a few weeks earlier, Dormer divided the bulk of his property and possessions between his wife and William’s infant son, Robert (Dormer)^†, soon to be 2nd Lord Dormer. He appointed as executors his kinsmen Sir William Borlase^‡ and Sir John Dormer^‡, and as overseer Lord Chancellor Ellesmere.36 PROB 11/128, ff. 488v-91v. Dormer died two days later, and was buried in Wing church, where he had already erected his own monument, the epitaph failing to record either his death date or his peerage.37 VCH Bucks. iii. 456; Lipscombe, iii. 533; WARD 7/56/197.