William Dormer

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Sir William Dormer, KB (died 17 May 1575) was a Tudor knight, captain and politician. He was born before 1514, the eldest son of Sir Robert Dormer and Jane Newdigate. He made Eythrope in Buckinghamshire his main home from 1535 to 1559.

Dormer may have first come to notice in the service of Thomas Cromwell, and his marriage to Mary Sidney may have been helped by Cromwell. He was made a Knight of the Bath in 1553.

He had a long political career. He was MP for Chipping Wycombe in 1542 and served in the war against France in 1544, where he commanded a company of 100 men at a Buckinghamshire muster. In 1546 he attended a court reception for the French ambassador. In 1553 he was returned as a knight of the shire for Buckinghamshire in the second Parliament of Edward VI. During the succession crisis of 1553, it is not clear what his position was, but in May 1554 Queen Mary confirmed him as falconer in recognition of his support for her. He may have been Sheriff for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire because of his daughter Jane Dormer’s friendship with the Queen, and he again served as knight of the shire for Buckinghamshire in Mary’s fifth Parliament in 1558. After Mary’s death, his mother and his daughter Jane left England for the Continent. Despite his dislike of Elizabeth I’s religious settlement, his Catholic family ties kept him politically acceptable, and he sat again as MP for Buckinghamshire in 1571 in Elizabeth’s third Parliament. He died at about age 72 and was buried in the Dormer family vault at All Saints’ Church, Wing. His second wife, Dorothy, had a monument erected for him and founded an almshouse in Wing.

Dormer married twice. First, he wed Mary Sidney, the eldest daughter of Sir William Sidney and Anne Pakenham. They had two sons, Thomas and Robert (both said to have died in infancy), and two daughters, Anne (who married Sir Walter Hungerford) and Jane (a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary who married the Spanish ambassador, the Duke of Feria).

Around 1550 he married Dorothy Catesby (d. 1613), twenty years his junior, daughter of Isabel and Anthony Catesby of Whiston, Northamptonshire. William and Dorothy had one son, Robert Dormer, 1st Baron Dormer, who married Elizabeth Browne, and six daughters: Mary (who married Anthony Browne), Grissel, Katherine (who married John St John, 2nd Baron St John of Bletso), Frances, Amphyllis and Margaret (who married Sir Henry Constable). After Sir William Dormer’s death, Dorothy married Sir William Pelham.