The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. I.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Damry : for D'Amorie, from Amars or Amorie, near Caen. Gilbert d'Amorie, a benefactor to Eynsham Abbey (Mon. i. 265) had grants from Robert D'Oylley in Oxford, and held lands in Somersetshire in 1168. His father, William, is also mentioned. In the following century Roger de Amory held part of the Honour of D'Oylly in Bucks from the Earl of Warwick (Testa de Nevill). He was probably the father of Gilbert, who in 1293 was in the expedition to Gascony, and left three sons: 1. Sir Roger; 2. Nicolas; and 3. Sir Richard. The eldest, Sir Roger (from whom Damory Court in Dorsetshire takes its name), was summoned to parliament by writ in 1317: and two years afterwards obtained from Ed. II. a grant of one hundred marks yearly, with the manors of Sandall in Yorkshire, Halghton in Oxfordshire, and Faukeshall in Surrey. He served in Scotland, and was at different times Constable of Knaresborough and Gloucester, and Warden of the Forest of Dene. But in 1322 he enrolled himself under the banner of Thomas Earl of Lancaster with the confederate barons then in arms against the Despencers; marched with them to Burton upon Trent, and thence to Tutbury Castle, where he fell sick, and died. He had married an heiress of Royal blood already twice a widow, Elizabeth de Clare, the niece of Edward II., and one of the three sisters that divided the great fee of Gilbert, last Earl of Gloucester. She brought him only daughters; some say not more than one daughter, Elizabeth Lady Bardolph; in which case the title that she conveyed must have perished in the attainder of her grandson in the time of Henry IV. Banks, however, mentions that she had a younger sister, Eleanor, the wife of John de Raleigh (ancestor of the gallant Sir Walter) among whose descendants the barony remains in abeyance.

Nicholas d'Amorie, the second brother, a landowner in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, was the father of Sir Richard, who had summons to parliament as a baron in 1326. He had been in the Scottish wars six years before; in 1323 was Steward of the Household to Ed. II., and died in 1330, leaving a son and three daughters. The son, Richard, second Lord D'Amorie, served for six consecutive years in France and Flanders, and died s. p. in 1375. The estates fell to his sisters, of whom the eldest, Elizabeth, was the wife of the renowned Sir John Chandos.

Richard, the youngest of the three brothers, was still represented till within the present century. His posterity continued the line; and though the name became gradually modified to. Dalmari, Dameer, and Damer, they retained unaltered their ancestral coat: Barry nebule of six, Argent and Gules, a bend Azure. They were first seated in Oxfordshire, where many of them lie buried in Bicester Priory; then we find them at South Molton and Chappel in Devon; and lastly, about 1628, in Dorsetshire. Joseph, the eldest of the six sons of John Damer of Godmanston in that county, commanded a troop of horse in Cromwell's army; and was more than once employed by him, when he became Protector, in secret negotiations with Cardinal Mazarin. After the Restoration, remembering these antecedents, he judged it expedient to leave the country; and selling his property in Dorset and Somerset, he crossed over to Ireland, where the land, little cultivated and thinly inhabited, being very cheap, he invested the money to great advantage. He attained a great age, and had "so extremely happy a constitution" that, during the ninety-one years of his life, he never once felt ill till three days before his death. He was not married; and two nephews successively inherited his new Irish domain, and settled in Tipperary. Joseph, the son of the younger, received first an Irish peerage as Baron Milton of Shronehill in Tipperary in 1753; then an English one as Baron Milton of Milton Abbey in Dorsetshire in 1762; and finally was created Earl of Dorchester and Viscount Milton in 1792. His wife was a daughter of the first Duke of Dorset, by whom he had four sons; but they all died s. p.; George, who succeeded him as second and last Earl, in 1808. Their only sister, Lady Caroline, known for her taste and skill in sculpture, never married; and at her death, in 1829, the Damer estates devolved upon John, second Earl of Portarlington, who added her name to his own. He was the grandson of her aunt, Mary Damer, the wife of William Dawson, created Viscount Carlow in 1776, and the mother of the first Earl of Portarlington.

"One branch of this ancient house was long seated at Yatt, co. Gloucester; and another has migrated to the United States, where the name and family of Amory are well known and esteemed."—Burke.