Richard Dyer (d. 1605)

Sir Richard Dyer of Staughton (died 1605), was an English courtier, soldier, and landowner.

Richard Dyer was the son of Laurence Dyer and Jane Southe, he was a gentleman of the privy chamber to King James I.

He was the heir of his great-uncle, Sir James Dyer.[1]

He lived at Place House, Great Staughton in Huntingdonshire.

Dyer married Mary or Marie Fitzwilliam (c. 1556-1601), a daughter of Sir William Fitzwilliam and Anne or Agnes Sidney (1523-1602), a daughter of Sir William Sidney of Penshurst Place and Anne Pakenham.

In June 1586 Sir Philip Sidney recommended "his cousin" Sir Richard Dyer as "very valiant" to Francis Walsingham; "I beseech you both countenance and favour him".[2]

Dyer was said to be at Tilbury in 1588, and Queen Elizabeth is supposed to have visited Place House.[3]

William Cornwallis published his Essayes in 1600, with a dedicatory letter by Henry Olney addressed to Mary, Lady Dyer, and her friends and cousins, the three daughters of Lucy Sidney; Lady Sara Hastings, Lady Theodosia Dudley, and Lady Mary Wingfield. The Wingfields lived at Kimbolton, close to Staughton. Mary, Lady Dyer, gave a silver bottle for travelling to her cousin, Elizabeth Harington, Lady Montagu (d. 1616), and she bequeathed it to her manservant for remembrance.[4]

Richard Dyer died in 1605. There is a double monument to Sir James Dyer and his wife Margaret Barrowe and Sir Richard Dyer and Mary Fitzwilliam in the church at Great Staughton.[5]

  1. ^ John Burke & John Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies (London, 1841), p. 179: Henry George Watson, A History of the Parish of Great Staughton (St Neots, 1916), p. 14.
  2. ^ Roger Kuin, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney, vol. 1 (Oxford, 2012), p. 1284.
  3. ^ Henry George Watson, A History of the Parish of Great Staughton (St Neots, 1916), pp. 13, 15.
  4. ^ Patricia Phillipy, Shaping Remembrance from Shakespeare to Milton, vol. 1 Cambridge, 2018), p. 87.
  5. ^ Henry George Watson, A History of the Parish of Great Staughton (St Neots, 1916), pp. 13-14.