Preface

Summary

Some episodes of the adventurous career of Sir Lewis Dyve were recorded in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1829 by J. G. Nichols (who was himself greatly indebted to the noted antiquary John Montgomery Traherne (1788-1860), a descendant of Sir Lewis), and were repeated with minor additions by William Marsh Harvey in his History of the Willey Hundred. This early work, although it must of necessity form the basis for any later life, is far from complete and contains a number of errors : it also neglects entirely the last eighteen years of Sir Lewis’ life, a course which Sir Charles Firth also followed in his article in the Dictionary of National Biography.

The present study is an attempt to present the first balanced account of Sir Lewis’ life. Both the Bodleian Library and the British Museum have yielded hitherto unpublished letters while the Public Record Office transcripts of the mass of Digby correspondence at Sherborne have furnished several letters of Sir Lewis during the later years of his life. With the return to London after war-time evacuation of the British Museum Thomason collection of seventeenth century pamphlets and newspapers it has been possible to use many of these, particularly for the Newport Pagnell and Dorset periods. Punctuation has been modernised throughout, but the spelling of the original documents has been retained.

My thanks are due to the authorities of the British Museum, Public Record Office, Principal Probate Registry, London County Council and Dr. Williams’ Library, Gordon Square (which maintained a full range of service throughout the war years when most of this account was prepared) for their facilities. I am particularly indebted to Mr. E. S. de Beer and the late Rev. E. C. Potter for their kind criticisms and suggestions, and to Mr. R. Skinner, the present owner of Bromham Hall, for his great interest in Sir Lewis.