DILLINGTON, Sir Robert, 1st bt. (1584-1664), of Knighton, I.o.W.

The Dillingtons had roots in Dillington, Somerset, but in the mid-sixteenth century Anthony Dillington† (d. 1587) moved to Poole, Dorset, where he served as a customs official and sat for the borough in two Marian Parliaments. About 1564 he acquired property on the Isle of Wight, at Knighton, four miles from Newport, and this became his main base.32HP Commons 1509-1558. Anthony’s younger son, Tristram, the father of this Member, died in 1594 leaving his heir still a minor.33PROB11/83/162; PROB11/84/339. Anthony’s will had already envisaged that his elder son Sir Robert Dillington† would supervise the education of his grandson.34PROB11/71/409; Misc. Gen. et Her. 2nd ser. ii. 123-4. When Sir Robert died childless in 1604, the family patrimony passed to his nephew Robert, who was still a few months short of attaining his majority.35PROB11/104/609; WARD 7/37/104.

Initially, Dillington does not appear to have been particularly wealthy: his cousin Sir John Oglander pronounced his estate ‘not great’.36I.o.W. RO, OG/AA/28, f. 11. However, he soon began to expand his holdings in the eastern half of the island, and later acquired a manor in the west.37I.o.W. RO, JER/WA/AppV/20; JER/HBY/32/3; VCH Hants v. 142, 219, 252. Oglander claimed that Dillington’s father and uncle could ‘hardly endure him’ (a harsh judgement, considering Robert’s age at their deaths), that he grew rich through thrift (a possibility Oglander elsewhere denied), and that he was ‘base, proud and miserable, not caring for any but those by whom he may gain’. ‘Out of base penuriousness joined with filthy unnatural lust’ he fathered an illegitimate child on one of his own cousins, and when he was awarded a baronetcy in 1628, Oglander described him as ‘the fool baronet’.38I.o.W. RO, OG/AA/28, ff. 11, 33; OG/AA/27, f. 66; OG/CC/115. Yet, while there was a daughter born out of wedlock and other glimpses of Sir Robert as a controversial and perhaps irascible local figure, in practice Oglander and Dillington co-operated in local public life and private affairs (for example, both had responsibility for the estate of John Kemp*), and correspondence was maintained between the two families.39I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/265, 335; OG/CC/115; OG/EE/154, 156; C. Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony (1945), 66. Dillington’s landed base probably rendered him difficult to ignore.

During the 1620s and 1630s, Dillington was active in both local administration and the militia, serving on numerous local commissions and as a senior captain of the Isle of Wight trained bands in the East Medine.40CSP Dom. 1627-8, pp. 304, 329; 1628-9, pp. 164, 244; 1635, p. 319; I.o.W RO, OG/BB/75, 104, 294; C181/3, f. 240v; C181/5, ff. 24, 58; Coventry Docquets, 84. In 1626 he was listed as being prepared to lend £10 to the king, but there is evidence of a willingness to oppose crown policies.41I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/122. Like Oglander, in August 1628 he joined a delegation from the island which attended the king in order to protest against billeting, and in September 1629 petitioned for the good of the country and for billet money to be deployed locally.42Royalist’s Notebook ed. Bamford, 30-1; I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/176, 182. In 1631 he compounded for knighthood, at £30, but in 1635 he was among leading Isle of Wight gentry who signed a petition against Ship Money, on the grounds of the region’s poverty.43Cornw. RO, ME 2886, 2882-3; Add. 21922, f. 176v; I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/322.

Dillington was not returned to Parliament before the civil war. In July 1641 he was the first signatory to an order relating to the implementation at Newport of the act for disbanding the army that had been mustered for action against the Scots.44I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/443. The following February he and Oglander supplied the island’s then governor, Jerome Weston, 2nd earl of Portland, with information of ‘scandalous words’ spoken against Parliament.45LJ iv. 617a. Subsequently he was re-appointed as a deputy lieutenant by Parliament’s new governor, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, and on 28 July he was among a dozen Hampshire gentlemen delegated authority in the New Forest by Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland.46Royalist’s Notebook ed. Bamford, 110; SP16/384, f. 66.

Dillington’s allegiance was opaque, however, setting a pattern for the next two decades. In early August he signed a letter from notables on the Isle of Wight, headed by Sir John Oglander, protesting ‘that they would uphold the true Protestant religion’ against ‘all papist or other ill-affected persons’ and ‘admit no foreign power or government except by the advice of the king by resolution of Parliament’.47Three Declarations (1642), 5-6; I.o.W. RO, NBC 45/16a, pp. 425-6; OG/BB/426. While this might be construed as neutralist or pacific in intent, refracted at Westminster through the lens of Hampshire militants, it appeared otherwise, and there was sufficient suspicion of Dillington that, when it was read in the Commons on 15 August, he alone of the subscribers was summoned as a delinquent.48CJ ii. 720a.

Two days later the House heard that Dillington and Oglander had ‘caused the watches of the island to be let down’; that Dillington had attempted to supply the royalists at Portsmouth ‘with corn of his own’, only to be thwarted by a fellow justice of the peace ‘Mr Bunckley’ [John Bulkeley*]; and that he had accompanied another signatory to the Isle of Wight protestation and a future royalist, Jeremy Brett, to Newport, and ‘in a rude manner swaggered and used speeches’.49CJ ii. 723b; The copy of a letter concerning divers passages at Portsmouth (1642), 7; I.o.W. RO, NBC 45/16a, 435-6. Especially in view of later developments, it cannot be discounted that the charges against Dillington were in part fabricated or malicious, or, inasmuch as they were justified, that the circumspect Oglanders were more culpable. That innocent activity undertaken in the past may have been seized upon and manipulated is suggested by a warrant of 9 September 1642 from George Goring*, the royalist governor of Portsmouth, to Sir John Oglander to receive wheat which Dillington had bought from William Oglander in payment of timber supplied for works at Portsmouth two years earlier.50I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/468. This apparently marks Oglander as the royalist he indeed became, but does not definitively damn Dillington.

Meanwhile, Dillington arrived at Westminster – apprehended, according to one newspaper, by Governor Pembroke and imprisoned in the Tower – and a petition from him read in the Commons on 5 September was referred to the Committee for Examinations.51CJ ii. 751b, 752b; Remarkable Passages (5-12 Sept. 1642), A4v (E.202.44). Three days later a report from the committee relayed his confession. The details were not recorded in the Journal, but in some measure they must have served to excuse him, for he was released from the custody of the serjeant-at-arms once the House had approved his bail (10 Sept.), in the persons of Surrey and Isle of Wight justice of the peace Sir John Dingley of Kingston-upon-Thames (who was to be a parliamentarian stalwart) and Mr Thomas Barnes of Blackfriars.52CJ ii. 758a, 761a; A. and O.

From the spring of 1643 Dillington’s son, also Robert Dillington, another signatory to the offending petition, was named to numerous local parliamentarian commissions, including the Isle of Wight committee.53A. and O.; I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/484; CJ iii. 157b. Sir Robert’s political rehabilitation was more precarious. In September, as colonel of the East Medine, he acknowledged a warrant from the earl of Pembroke for mustering forces for Parliament on St George’s Down, while in 1644 he was involved in the work of the deputy lieutenants.54I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/481; Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 515. Yet before the beginning of June 1644 further accusations against him had again led to his imprisonment. On the 3rd the Committee of Both Kingdoms concluded that there was no substance to the charges beyond the mere existence of a commission of array directed to him by the king, and referred his release to Pembroke.55CSP Dom. 1644, p. 199. This was evidently effected. On 24 October the House of Lords approved a petition, to which Dillington and future recruiter MP Sir Gregory Norton* were the leading signatories, seeking an enhanced maintenance for the governor.56LJ vii. 32a-b. Within a few weeks Dillington was under fire again, however, seemingly the target of local radicals. On 2 December Robert Dillington junior, concluding that ‘these times are dangerous even for friends to whisper’, informed Sir John Oglander that Sir Robert had ‘gone to London, his actions traduced and his good endeavours turned to malignity’, but ‘willing to submit to the justice there’. The culprit, it was hinted, was someone unacceptable both to royalists and to moderate parliamentarians: ‘I believe you know who is the disturber in our little island’.57I.o.W RO, OG/CC/59.

The immediate upshot of this set-back is unknown. Also in December 1644 the king, having apparently concluded definitively that Sir Robert was disloyal, removed him from his list for the Hampshire commission of the peace.58Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 243. But while Dillington junior was confirmed by Parliament on the Isle of Wight committee in June 1645, and stood unsuccessfully in the recruiter elections at Newtown and at Newport that November, it is not until 1647 that there is clear evidence that Sir Robert was still active in public life.59CJ iv. 167b; LJ vii. 416b; I.o.W. RO, NBC 45/16a, pp. 403, 490; JER/BAR/3/9/8, pp. 41-2. In May that year both Dillingtons, sitting as justices of the peace before Pembroke’s deputy Colonel Thomas Carne, were involved in the prosecution of an Anabaptist preacher, while from June Sir Robert’s name again appeared among assessment commissioners.60LJ ix. 195b; A. and O. Once Charles I was a captive at Carisbrooke Castle, Dillington’s role as an Isle of Wight militia colonel assumed greater significance. It was to him and to Sir John Leigh, colonel of the equivalent force in the west of the island, that, on his departure for the mainland on 27 November 1648, Colonel Robert Hammond confided local security and – with Captain Thomas Bowreman* and other officers of the castle garrison – the retention of the person of the king.61LJ x. 616b-617a; HMC Portland I, 506. According to information received by the government in 1651, ostensibly acquired from Dillington junior, Sir Robert and Sir John intended to obey Hammond’s instructions, only to be thwarted when army officers arrived to remove Charles to Hurst Castle and then to London for trial.62HMC Portland, i. 589, 594.

Under the Rump and through 1653 Dillington, like his son, remained on the commission of the peace and continued to be named as an assessment commissioner.63The Names of the Justices (1650), 50; A. and O.; An Act for an Assessment (1653), 296. As the intelligence of 1651 suggested, they were not above informing on the royalism of their neighbours, and most notably the Oglanders, but neither political disagreement nor personal friction prevented Sir Robert being named as an overseer in the will of Sir John Oglander, drafted in November 1649.64HMC Portland, i. 589; I.o.W. RO, OG/Z/20. Insular realities perhaps made for idiosyncratic allegiances. Robert Dillington junior died suddenly early in 1654, leaving a son and namesake, the future MP Robert Dillington*, recently admitted to Queen’s College, Oxford, a haven of covert royalism.65PROB11/234/25; Al. Ox.

The death of the county committee-man (ostensibly a more promising candidate) may help explain why in 1654, at the age of 70, Sir Robert Dillington entered Parliament for the first time. He was returned as a knight of the shire for the Isle of Wight in the second election, called in early October following the decision of both John Lisle* and William Sydenham* to accept places elsewhere, and held on 1 November.66CJ vii. 372b, 373a. Once at Westminster, he received only one committee nomination, to consider the abolition of purveyance (22 Dec.).67CJ vii. 407b. Dogged, as ever, by controversy, it seems that Dillington already faced new charges against him in Parliament, possibly in relation to his illegitimate daughter, over whose marriage he was experiencing problems.68I.o.W. RO, OG/CC/115. What these may have been does not emerge from the parliamentary record; neither does any further parliamentary activity on his part. He does not seem to have been a candidate in other elections under the protectorate. It was his grandson who sat in 1659.

It is probable that Dillington welcomed the Restoration, as his enemies had perhaps suspected all along. Somewhat remarkably, when George Morley, bishop of Winchester visited the Isle of Wight in September 1660, among the 1,000 candidates he confirmed was not only Edward Dillington†, Sir Robert’s young son from his late second marriage, but the man himself – a fact which seems symptomatic more of a casual approach to ecclesiastical niceties rather than of previous theological scruples.69CCSP v. 53. In 1661 Dillington contributed £30 to the ‘free and voluntary gift’ to Charles II from the islanders.70E179/176/559. Still officially colonel of the East Medine as late as 1663, and still named sometimes to local commissions, his age may have precluded him from playing an active part in political and administrative life.71I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/498, 502; SR. Dillington settled his estates in April 1663 at the marriage of his grandson Robert, providing also for Edward.72I.o.W. RO, JER/HBY/32/5; OG/E/9. He died in 1664.73Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. n.s. x), 105-6; Misc. Her. et Gen. 2nd ser. i. 381-2; I.o.W. RO, JER/HBY/32/4. The inventory taken in May 1665 valued his personal estate at over £8,000.74PROB5/3375; DEL10/10; PROB11/322/15. Family members continued to represent Newport in Parliament into the 1720s.75HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690–1715.