DAMER, Joseph (1718-1798), of Milton Abbey, Dorset.

Joseph Damer was put up by Dodington for Weymouth in 1741 as a young man ‘of great expectation in Ireland, and is to have a daughter of the Duke of Dorset’.Sir Dudley Ryder’s diary, 9 Aug. 1740, Harrowby mss. His Irish expectation came from his uncle, John Damer, who appears to have settled the bulk of his fortune on him, probably to bring about his marriage, for on 19 Mar. 1767 Horace Walpole wrote of him to Mann as having ‘already three and twenty thousand pounds a year’, with ‘seven more ... just coming from the author of all this wealth, an old uncle in Ireland, of ninety-three’. Returned as an opposition candidate, he voted against the Government till 1746, when he voted for the Hanoverians and was classed by the ministry as ‘doubtful’. Nominated by Pelham for Bramber in 1747, he supported the Government for the rest of that Parliament, towards the end of which he obtained an Irish peerage.

He died 12 Jan. 1798. Horace Walpole said of him that ‘his birth and parts were equally mean and contemptible’.Last Jnls. i. 254.