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Some Homes of the Dormer Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

T. B. Trappes-Lomax
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Extract

The Dormer family, which amassed a fortune as wool merchants in the fifteenth century, was originally seated at West Wycombe, co. Bucks. Its ever-increasing wealth is reflected in a series of land purchases in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which resulted in the formation of a very large property of some 30,000 acres with its centre at Wing, between Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard, and detached portions at Eythorpe, five miles west of Aylesbury, at Peterley, near Great Missenden, and elsewhere. The marriage of Sir Robert Dormer, who died in 1552, to Jane Newdigate, brought to the Wing nucleus .the important addition of the manor of Ascott.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , October 1965 , pp. 175 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1965

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References

Notes

1. Eythorpe by 1506 (or perhaps in 1533), the manor of Wing 1515, Marsh Gibbon & Crowley 1530, the manor of Wing-Crofton 1544, Ilmer-in-Aston & Hoggeston 1546, Dagnall 1547, Aston Abbots & Hughenden by 1552, Buck-land near Tring and a property near Wendover about 1591, Saunderton 1592, Wingrave 1607, Peterley 1611, Grove Park co. Warwick 1615 and others including Stewkley, Studham, Cramwell, Rollesham, Ravensmeere and Grove co. Bucks, at undetermined dates.

2. In the 19th century this area was to become “The Rothschild Country” with Mentmore & Waddesdon replacing Ascott & Eythorpe.

3. Eythorpe probably survived as a Catholic centre to 1650 as will be seen below.

4. Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, by Clifford, Henry (1887), 15.Google Scholar

5. After his marriage in 1610 to Alice Molyneux he seems to have lived at Ascott House with his father, for his 3rd son Richard was born there c. 1613. (He was 18 years old in May 1631; Douai Diaries CRS x. 293, 294.)

6. Rev. C. O. Moreton, History of Waddesdon and Over Winchendon; Lips-combe's History of Buckinghamshire.

7. Sheahan, History of Buckinghamshire.

8. Moreton op. cit.

9. Many of the family portraits, which had hung in the picture gallery at Eythorpe, were bought back at different times by the Dormer family. The horse armour of the 1st Earl of Carnarvon and the boots he wore at the battle of Newbury, as also some chimney pieces, were acquired by John Stanhope Dormer, a younger brother of the 9th Lord Dormer, at the sale by auction of the contents of Eythorpe about 1810. All are now at Grove Park.

10. It might be thought that Elizabeth Browne, widow of the 1st Lord Dormer, would have had Ascott House for her lifetime, but in September 1623 we find that she went to inspect a house in Clerkenwell with a view to renting it (Hist. MSS Commn. Report XII App. I, Part I.) She was buried at Wing in 1630.

11. Cal. S.P. Dom. 1617, 456; Chamberlain to Carleton 7 Dec. 1616.

12. Foley, Records S.J. IV, 443, 444.

13. Author's preface to the Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, by Clifford, Henry, who was alive in 1643.Google Scholar

14. [Roger Palmer, earl of Castlemain] The Catholique Apology, 3rd ed. (1674), 574.

15. One of these priests may have been John Holyman, O.S.B., whom her son Sir William presented to the Wing living in 1546 (Lipscombe, Hist, of Bucks.), but he had accepted the rectory of Hanborough near Woodstock in 1535 and is known to have spent most of his time at Exeter College, Oxford, until he became Bishop of Bristol in November 1554, which dignity he held till his death on 20 December 1558. As he chose to be buried at Hanborough, that place clearly meant more to him than Wing, and I very much doubt if he ever did more than pay Wing an occasional visit and draw its income (Gillow, Bibl. Diet. Engl. Cath. iii.370).

16. Life of Jane Dormer, 18, 19.

17. Ibid., 43.

18. Ibid., 47.

19. Simpson, Life of Campion, 250.

20. Ibid., 158, 376.

21. Edmund Campion (1935), 123.

22. Foley, Records II, 432.

23. Cal. S.P. Dom (1591-4), 372.

24. D.N.B.; Gillow; The First and Second Diaries of the English College, Douay, ed. T. F. Knox (1878), 7, 24; S.P. Dom. Eliz. vol. ccxlv, no. 138.

25. Challoner, Memoirs of Missionary Priests (1924), 323; D.N.B. under Robert Cooke.

26. Cecil Chichester-Constable's MS. Notes xiii. 2461, which cite no authority but were probably based either on Cal. S.P. or on V.C.H. Yorks.

27. Cecil Chichester-Constable's MSS. Notes; D.N.B.; Cath. Encyclopaedia; Foley, Records IV, 18, VI, 69, 134.

28. Catholic Record Society I, 98. [Editors’ additional note: An article published in Recusant History (vol. 7, no. 4) since the death of Brigadier Trappes-Lomax throws more light on the chaplaincy at Ascott about this period. In August 1624 the priest resident there was Edward Bennett, a secular, who “rules” — one might say with a rod of iron — the house of Lady Dormer” (art. cit. p. 175). Bennett was still there when, on 16 May 1625, the ceremony was held at Ascott House at which Bishop Richard Smith formally took possession of his province (art. cit. p. 193). As Bennett had been appointed archdeacon for Buckinghamshire by William Bishop as early as 1623 and continued to hold this appointment till his death in 1637, he probably was resident at Ascott throughout this whole period. This makes it unlikely that Southcote was ever chaplain at Ascott.]

29. Foley, Records I, 138.

30. Foley, ibid. [Editors’ note; This is evidently an error, for which the source quoted by Foley is responsible. The same document by Sir John Coke contains the further sentence: “Hee [Smith] seldom cometh to London but employeth Fisher most part at the Ladie Dormer's; and … Musket in London.” But Fisher and Musket are the same man, so “Fisher” must be a slip for Bennett. Cf. note 28 supra.]

31. C.R.S. x. 305.

32. Brady, Annals of the Catholic Hierarchy, p. 144.

33. I, 39.

34. O.F.M. archives at East Bergholt; Thaddeus, Franciscans in England, p. 202.

35. O.F.M. archives at East Bergholt.

36. Thaddeus, op. cit. p. 303.

37. Burton, Life and Times of Bishop Challoner, i, 148 Google Scholar, 206, 207.

38. Foley, Records VII, 205 Google Scholar; Great Missenden Register.

39. Catholic Directory for 1840.

40. Kirk, Biographies, p. 124.

41. Foley, Records VII, 372.

42. Idsworth House is in the chapelry of Idsworth and parish of Chalton. No Idsworth burial registers have survived and it is very doubtful if burials ever took place there. It is now, and apparently for many years has been, the custom to bury the inhabitants of Idsworth chapelry in the churchyard at Chalton. The Chalton registers include the year 1694, but there is no entry of Robert Hornby's burial. It is possible he was buried at Harting through the influence of the Caryll family of Ladyholt.

43. O.F.M. archives at East Bergholt.

44. Thaddeus, Franciscans in England, 225.

45. Cath. Rec. Soc. xiii, 174.

46. Foley, Records vii, 627; information from H. Chadwick, S.J.

47. Burton, Life and Times of Bishop Challoner, i, 148 Google Scholar, 155.

48. Thaddeus, Franciscans in England, pp. 158, 254.

49. C.R.S. xiii, 174.

50. Humphreys, East Hendred 243–4; Kirk, Biographies, 90.