DAMER, Hon. George Lionel Dawson (1788-1856), of Came Abbey, Dorchester, Dorset and 6 Tilney Street, Park Lane, London, Midx.

Born at the family seat of Emo Court, Queen’s County, Dawson was one of nine children of the 1^st earl of Portarlington, and Lady Caroline Stuart, whose father was the former prime minister, Lord Bute.1P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 101. The family, originally descended from the Dawsons of Spaldington, Yorkshire, had settled in Ireland during the reign of Charles II. The son of the first Irish settler, William Dawson, had purchased the borough of Portarlington in 1709, and the family dominated the representation of Queen’s County, where his father commanded the county militia in the 1798 rebellion.2His great-grandfather, Ephraim Dawson (1684-1746) was Whig MP for Portarlington (1713-4) and Queen’s County (1715-46) and acquired the family estates. His grandfather, William Henry Dawson (1712-79) represented Portarlington (1733-60, 1769-70) and Queen’s County (1761-8) before being created baron Dawson in 1770, and viscount Carlow in 1776. His father, Rt. Hon. John Dawson (1774-98), was MP for Portarlington (1766-8) and Queen’s County (1768-79), before succeeding as 2nd visc. Carlow, and was created earl of Portarlington in 1785. His uncle, Hon. Joseph Dawson (1751-87) was MP for Portarlington (1773-6, 1777-83): E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), iv. 21-5, 32-3. Dawson and his brother, the 2^nd earl, assumed the name Damer after succeeding to a portion of the estates of the Damers of Came, Dorset, upon the demise of their aunt, Lady Caroline Damer, in 1829.3Dod’s Peerage (1865), 479; The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 68; Gent. Mag. (1841), ii. 203. His grandmother Mary, viscountess Carlow, was the sister of Joseph Damer, 1st earl of Dorchester.

Dawson served in the 1^st Dragoon Guards, visiting Russia in 1812 as aide-de-camp to Sir Robert Wilson,4He later joined the Association of the Friends of Poland: Morning Chronicle, 1 Sept. 1837. and, having been slightly wounded at Waterloo, was made lieutenant-colonel in December 1815.5Lord Birkenhead, The Five Hundred Best English Letters (1931), 617-9; The Times, 17 Apr. 1856; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Apr. 1856. He served on the general staff as an assistant quarter-master general during the battle: Monthly Magazine, xxxix (1815), 663. He was ‘one of the Regency Dandies who frequented White’s’ and a prominent member of the social circle surrounding the Prince Regent. Dawson married Mary (‘Minnie’) Seymour, who had been adopted by Mrs. Fitzherbert (unlawful wife of George IV) in 1785, and who subsequently provided them with private financial assistance.6W.H. Wilkins, Mrs. Fitzherbert and George IV (1908), 280-96; HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 876. Mary was the daughter of Lord Hugh and Lady Horatia Seymour. In 1801 her parents died and their executors moved to reclaim the child from Fitzherbert, whereupon the Prince of Wales began a lengthy court case which resulted in a compromise under which Mary remained with Mrs Fitzherbert, but under the guardianship of the child’s paternal uncle, the second marquess of Hertford, until her marriage: M.J. Levy, ‘Fitzherbert [nee Smythe; other married name Weld], Maria Anne’, Oxford DNB, xix. 874-8 [876-7]. She had opposed the match, regarding Dawson, ‘a penniless soldier’, as ‘quite the wrong man’ for her ward, but the couple were married on 20 August 1825 in spite of her objections. Dawson was, however, excluded from Minnie’s lavish settlement.7A. Leslie, Mrs. Fitzherbert (1960), 176; V. Irvine, The King’s Wife. George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert (2005), 153-66.

Dawson stood unsuccessfully for County Tipperary at the 1826 general election in the Damer interest as a ‘strenuous friend of Catholic emancipation’. In 1830 he came forward again but declined to go to the poll, and made way for the radical Robert Otway Cave in 1831.8HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 875, 880; The Times, 19 May 1829. He unsuccessfully contested Portarlington in 1832 and, although described as the ‘corporation candidate’, pledged to seek ‘the abolition of tithes, church cess, and the slave trade’, and to ‘vote for a provision for the poor’. Having conducted himself in a ‘manly, candid, and independent’ manner, he lost by a single vote and brought an unsuccessful petition against his opponent, Thomas Gladstone.9Freeman’s Journal, 19, 28 Dec. 1832; Morning Chronicle, 21 Feb. 1833; A.E. Cockburn & W. Carpenter Rowe, Cases of controverted elections determined in the eleventh parliament of the United Kingdom (1833), i. 257-9. In December 1833 he accompanied Lord Howard de Walden to Lisbon in the capacity of first attaché.10Freeman’s Journal, 27 Dec. 1833.

Having declared himself ‘decidedly Conservative’, Dawson Damer was returned unopposed on his brother’s interest for Portarlington in 1835, being ‘anxious to reform real abuses’ such as the system of tithes, while showing ‘a just regard to the conservation of our inestimable constitution’.11R.B. Mosse, The Parliamentary Guide (1837), 153; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 46; E. O’Leary & M. Lalor, History of the Queen’s County (1914), ii. 688; Morning Post, 2, 8 Jan. 1835. He entered the Commons ‘leaning, to the Tories’ and proved hostile to the Whig government, of which his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Parnell, was a member, voting in the minority for Sir Charles Manners Sutton as speaker.12Examiner, 8 Feb. 1835; Assembled Commons, 68; Belfast News-letter, 24 Feb. 1835. He acted as Lord Alvanley’s second in his duel with Morgan O’Connell on Wimbledon Common in May 1835.13Morning Chronicle, 5 May 1835; Caledonian Mercury, 9 May 1835. Alvanley had insinuated in the House of Lords that in taking office the Whigs had accepted terms from Daniel O’Con­nell, who subsequently referred to Alvaney as a ‘bloated buffoon’. Morgan O’Connell took up Alvaney’s challenge on behalf of his father and shots were exchanged near Regent’s Park on 4 May without effect: Lord Alvaney to D. O’Connell, 21 Apr. 1835; D. O’Connell to Hon. George Dawson Damer, 1 May 1835, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 295-6, 299-300. In the Commons he supported Peel’s ministry on the address and the election of a speaker, voted to protect the electoral rights of freemen and backed Peel’s motion on the Irish Church bill. He opposed the repeal of the malt tax, and Lord John Russell’s motion on Irish Church temporalities.14Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 100. In 1836 he voted against the Whig ministry on the address, 4 Feb. 1836, opposed the Irish municipal corporations bill, 28 Mar., and divided against the government’s motion on Irish tithes, 3 June, and the ballot, 23 June. Regarded by now as ‘a Tory and a renegade’ by Irish Liberals, ‘the Radical of 1832 – but the Orangeman of 1837’ was re-elected at the general election, seeing off a Liberal challenger.15Morning Chronicle, 18 July 1837; Caledonian Mercury, 26 Aug. 1837. Prior to the contest, however, Dawson Damer had been forced to deny allegations that his brother had negotiated the sale of the borough to the Whigs.16Morning Post, 15 July 1837, and see HP Commons, 1832-68: ‘Mahony, Pierce’.

In the following session, Dawson Damer generally divided with the Conservatives, opposing the abolition of church rates, 25 May 1837, and dividing against a motion to reconsider the corn laws, 15 Mar. 1838. He supported Lord Sandon’s motion blaming government policy for the rebellion in Canada, 7 Mar., but declined ‘from considerations of private friendship’ to vote for Lord Chandos’s subsequent motion concerning the expense of Lord Durham’s mission to Canada.17Ipswich Journal, 7 Apr. 1838; Freeman’s Journal, 31 May 1838. He opposed the government over Irish tithe appropriation, 15 May 1838, and the following year divided against the ministry over the suspension of the Jamaican constitution, 6 Mar. 1839, and opposed the election of Charles Shaw Lefevre as speaker, 27 May.

Dawson Damer held a prominent place in society, attending the coronation of the Ferdinand I of Austria as king of Lombardy and Venetia in 1838, and spending time in highest social circles in Naples and Rome in 1839.18Morning Chronicle, 21 Sept. 1838, 14 Feb. 1839; Freeman’s Journal, 15 Nov. 1839. In June 1838, Damer’s wife christened the steamship British Queen, then the largest vessel in the world: Preston Chronicle, 2 June 1838. The following year he was excused from attending the House until Easter, being absent on a twelve-month tour of Egypt and other parts of Asia,19Caledonian Mercury, 6 Feb. 1840; Freeman’s Journal, 31 Mar. 1840. For an account of the trip, see Hon. Mrs. G.L. Damer, Diary of a Tour in Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and the Holy Land (2 vols., 1841). before returning to attend the trial of Edward Oxford for his attempted assassination of the Queen.20Morning Chronicle, 10 July 1840. On his return to the Commons he voted for Lord Stanley’s Irish registration bill, 26 Mar. 1840, and supported the motion of censure condemning government policy towards China, 9 Apr. 1840. That July he drew upon his recent experiences in the Levant, using the supply debate on the conveyance of mails in the Mediterranean to urge an expansion of British maritime activity in the region so as to prevent the sea from becoming ‘a French lake’.21Hansard, 24 July 1840, vol. 55, cc. 960-7; Belfast News-letter, 28 July 1840. The next year he opposed Lord Morpeth’s Irish registration bill, 25 Feb. 1841, and raised questions about the administration of the poor law in Queen’s County in March.22Hansard, 12 Mar. 1841, vol. 57, c. 147; Freeman’s Journal, 15 Mar. 1841. Although Dawson Damer is not known to have served on a select committee or introduced any bills, he continued to support the Conservatives, siding with Sir Robert Peel over the reduction of foreign sugar duty, 18 May 1841, and divided in favour of the confidence motion against the Whig ministry on 4 June, having hurried back to Westminster ‘almost before the remains’ of his recently deceased brother ‘were cold’.23Preston Chronicle, 5 June 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 8, 22 June 1841; Standard, 15 June 1841.

During Dawson Damer’s long absence abroad in 1839-40, it was suggested that ‘if he should ever again appear again before the electors’ of Portarlington, he would be rejected.24Preston Chronicle, 15 Feb. 1840. However, on the death of his uncle, Rev. William Dawson, in February 1839, he had acquired ‘a considerable accession to his already large fortune’, and at the 1841 general election his financial independence and status as the virtual patron of the borough secured him against the threat of a radical challenge.25The Chartist, 16 Feb. 1839; Morning Post, 30 Sept. 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 28 Sept. 1841. Having been re-elected unopposed, in spite of ‘an apathy and want of exertion’ on his part, he was appointed comptroller of the household on 9 September 1841 and made a privy councillor by Peel on 14 September 1841.26Standard, 7, 8 July 1841; The Times, 11, 15 Sept. 1841; Examiner, 25 Sept. 1841. His duty to his constituency appeared to contemporary critics to have become ‘so intolerably troublesome to the gallant but exhausted representative’: Freeman’s Journal, 3 July 1841. That year he assisted more than 200 of the tenants on his Dorset estate to emigrate to Canada, and in February 1842 joined a deputation on behalf of English and Irish millers to protest against wheat and flour duties.27Ipswich Journal, 22 May 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 28 Feb. 1842. He supported Peel’s re-introduction of the income tax, 13 Apr., 31 May 1842, and endorsed Father Theobald Mathew’s temperance movement, entertaining him in London in August 1843.28Liverpool Mercury, 25 Aug. 1843. He voted for the Irish arms bill, 31 May 1843, and opposed William Smith O’Brien’s motions for a committee to consider Irish grievances, 12 July 1843, 23 Feb. 1844. He divided in favour of the Maynooth grant, 21 May 1845, and during 1844-5 sat on the provisional committee of the Southampton and Dorsetshire and the Oxford and Salisbury railways, and was involved in plans for the projected Great Munster railway.29The Times, 25 Oct. 1844, 15 Oct. 1845; Morning Chronicle, 10 Oct. 1845. After the death of his dissolute elder brother, the 2^nd earl, in December 1845, he fought to prevent the sale of the heavily indebted estates.30Morning Post, 2 Jan. 1846, 18 Dec. 1849; Daily News, 30 Aug. 1850.

Having defended the corn laws in 1841, endorsing Lord Stanley’s argument that they were not to blame for ‘the distress of manufacturers’, Dawson Damer became a late convert to free trade. He voted for the third reading of the corn importation bill, but by supporting ‘to the last the political measures’ of Peel, including his Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846, he lost the support of a large portion of the Conservative party in his constituency.31Morning Post, 30 Sept. 1841, 26 Jan. 1846; The Times, 9 July 1846, 17 Apr. 1856. Responding to the Irish famine in March 1847, he signed a resolution calling upon the government to allow outdoor relief to able bodied labourers and cede greater powers to relieving officers.32Morning Chronicle, 8 Mar. 1847. He issued an address at the 1847 general election, but was opposed by a liberally-minded Protectionist who enjoyed the support of Dawson Damer’s nephew, the 3^rd earl of Portarlington.33Daily News, 20 July 1847. His identity with the local affairs of the borough having now ‘entirely ceased’, he resigned from the contest to offer at Dorchester, where he was returned as a ‘Conservative; but in favour of free trade’.34Freeman’s Journal, 1 June 1847; Morning Chronicle, 19 July 1847; Examiner, 31 July 1847; Preston Guardian, 7 Aug. 1847; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1851), 161.

In his final parliament Dawson Damer behaved generally as a Derbyite, but divided with the Peelites on certain issues. He supported measures favourable to Catholics, voting for the Catholic relief bill, 8 Dec. 1847, and divided with the Peelites on Hume’s amendment to the income tax resolutions, 13 Mar. 1848. Yet he supported Lord Derby over Sir John Pakington’s amendment to the West Indies relief bill, 29 June and that July he signed a resolution calling upon the government to enforce law and order in Ireland.35W.D. Jones & A.B. Erickson, The Peelites 1846-1857 (1972), 225; Morning Chronicle, 8 July 1848. His attendance at Westminster was infrequent at this time, and he participated in only 19 of the 219 divisions in 1849.36Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1849. He did, however, support the repeal of the Navigation Acts, 23 Apr. 1849, sided with the Peelites on the question of official salaries, 30 Apr. 1850, and opposed Grantley Berkeley’s motion for a committee on the importation of corn, 14 May, and dividing against the amendment on the committee of supply (Ireland), 21 June. On the other hand, he divided with the Derbyites on the amendment of the Irish franchise bill, 10 May, and voted against removing the differential duty on West Indian sugar, 31 May 1850.

On foreign policy Dawson Damer identified with Lord Aberdeen and voted against Lord Palmerston in the division on the Don Pacifico affair, 28 June 1850.37Jones & Erickson, The Peelites 1846-1857, 225; J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the Party System (1972), 220-2. Like most Irish Conservatives, he backed Lord John Russell’s response to the ‘Papal aggression’, 25 Mar. 1851, and backed Disraeli’s motions for the relief of agricultural distress, 13 Feb., 11 Apr., also dividing with the Derbyites against John Herries’s amendment to the budget resolutions, 7 Apr., and Joseph Hume’s amendment on the income tax, 2 May.38Freeman’s Journal, 11 Nov. 1850; Conacher, Peelites and the Party System, 221, 226; Morning Chronicle, 9 Apr. 1852. When he stood again for Dorchester at the 1852 general election he emphasised the benefits of free trade, but advocated ‘a strong, united Conservative Government’. After expressing strong reservations about the advisability of the Maynooth grant, he was pushed into third place by a Liberal.39Morning Post, 8 July 1852.

Dawson Damer’s wife had died at St. Leonard’s-on-Sea in October 1848 and he survived her by more than seven years, dying after a short illness at 23 Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, in April l856.40Freeman’s Journal, 2 Nov. 1848; F. Boase, Modern English Biography, i. 839. His remains were brought by train to Came House and interred in the family vault. His funeral was attended by a large number of the neighbouring gentry, the pall being borne by his tenants.41Hampshire Advertiser & Salisbury Guardian, 26 Apr. 1856. He was succeeded by his only son, Lionel Seymour, MP for Portarlington, 1857-65, 1868-80, who succeeded to the earldom of Portarlington in 1889. In March 1847 his eldest daughter, Charlotte, had married Hugh Fortescue MP, viscount Ebrington, and in 1856 his youngest daughter, Constance, married Sir John Leslie, MP for County Monaghan, 1871-80.42Standard, 15 Mar. 1847; The Times, 2 Feb. 1876. It was said that he had once refused Louis Napoleon’s proposal of marriage to his daughter: Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 22 Feb. 1852.