DE SOTO, a city of Jefferson county, Missouri, U.S.A., on Joachim Creek, 42 m. S.S.W. of St Louis. Pop. (1890) 3960; (1900) 5611 (332 being foreign-born and 364 negroes); (1910) 4721. It is served by the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern railway, which has extensive repair shops here. About 2½ m. from De Soto is the Bochert mineral spring. In De Soto are Mount St Clement’s College (Roman Catholic, 1900), a theological seminary of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer under the charge of the Redemptorist Fathers, and a Young Men’s Christian Association building. De Soto is in a good agricultural and fruit-growing region, which produces Indian corn, apples, plums, pears and small fruit. Lead and zinc are mined in the vicinity and shipped from the city in considerable quantities; and among the city’s manufactures are shoes, flour and agricultural implements. The municipality owns the water-works, the water supply of which is furnished by artesian wells. De Soto was laid out in 1855 and was incorporated in 1869.
DESPARD, EDWARD MARCUS (1751-1803), Irish conspirator, was born in Queen’s Co., Ireland, in 1751. In 1766 he entered the British navy, was promoted lieutenant in 1772, and stationed at Jamaica, where he soon proved himself to have considerable engineering talent. He served in the West Indies with credit, being promoted captain after the San Juan expedition (1779), then made governor of the Mosquito Shore and the Bay of Honduras, and in 1782 commander of a successful expedition against the Spanish possessions on the Black river. In 1784 he took over the administration of Yucatan. Upon frivolous charges he was suspended by Lord Grenville, and recalled to England. From 1790 to 1792 these charges were held over him, and when dismissed no compensation was forthcoming. His complaints caused him to be arrested in 1798; and with a short interval he remained in gaol until 1800. By that time Despard was desperate, and engaged in a plot to seize the Tower of London and Bank of England and assassinate George III. The whole idea was patently preposterous, but Despard was arrested, tried before a special commission, found guilty of high treason, and, with six of his fellow-conspirators, sentenced in 1803 to be hanged, drawn and quartered. These were the last men to be so sentenced in England. Despard was executed on the 21st of February 1803.
His eldest brother, John Despard (1745-1829), had a long and distinguished career in the British army; gazetted an ensign in 1760, he was promoted through the various intermediate grades and became general in 1814. His most active service was in the American War of Independence, during which he was twice made prisoner.
DESPENSER, HUGH LE (d. 1265), chief justiciar of England, first plays an important part in 1258, when he was prominent on the baronial side in the Mad Parliament of Oxford. In 1260 the barons chose him to succeed Hugh Bigod as justiciar, and in 1263 the king was further compelled to put the Tower of London in his hands. On the outbreak of civil war he joined the party of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, and led the Londoners when they sacked the manor-house of Isleworth, belonging to Richard, earl of Cornwall, king of the Romans. Having fought at Lewes (1264) he was made governor of six castles after the battle, and was then appointed one of the four arbitrators to mediate between Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester. He was summoned to Simon de Montfort’s parliament in 1264, and acted as justiciar throughout the earl’s dictatorship. Despenser was killed at Evesham in August 1265.
See C. Bémont, Simon de Montfort (Paris, 1884); T. F. Tout in Owens College Historical Essays, pp. 76 ff. (Manchester, 1902).
DESPENSER, HUGH LE (1262-1326), English courtier, was a son of the English justiciar who died at Evesham. He fought for Edward I. in Wales, France and Scotland, and in 1295 was summoned to parliament as a baron. Ten years later he was sent by the king to Pope Clement V. to secure Edward’s release from the oaths he had taken to observe the charters in 1297. Almost alone Hugh spoke out for Edward II.’s favourite, Piers Gaveston, in 1308; but after Gaveston’s death in 1312 he himself became the king’s chief adviser, holding power and influence until Edward’s defeat at Bannockburn in 1314. Then, hated by the barons, and especially by Earl Thomas of Lancaster, as a deserter from their party, he was driven from the council, but was quickly restored to favour and loaded with lands and honours, being made earl of Winchester in 1322. Before this time Hugh’s son, the younger Hugh le Despenser, had become associated with his father, and having been appointed the king’s chamberlain was enjoying a still larger share of the royal favour. About 1306 this baron had married Eleanor (d. 1337), one of the sisters and heiresses of Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester, who was slain at Bannockburn; and after a division of the immense Clare lands had been made in 1317 violent quarrels broke out between the Despensers and the husbands of the other heiresses, Roger of Amory and Hugh of Audley. Interwoven with this dispute was another between the younger Despenser and the Mowbrays, who were supported by Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford, about some lands in Glamorganshire. Fighting having begun in Wales and on the Welsh borders, the English barons showed themselves decidedly hostile to the Despensers, and in 1321 Edward II. was obliged to consent to their banishment. While the elder Hugh left England the younger one remained; soon the king persuaded the clergy to annul the sentence against them, and father and son were again at court. They fought against the rebellious barons at Boroughbridge, and after Lancaster’s death in 1322 they were practically responsible for the government of the country, which they attempted to rule in a moderate and constitutional fashion. But their next enemy, Queen Isabella, was more formidable, or more fortunate, than Lancaster. Returning to England after a sojourn in France in 1326 the queen directed her arms against her husband’s favourites. The elder Despenser was seized at Bristol, where he was hanged on the 27th of October 1326, and the younger was taken with the king at Llantrisant and hanged at Hereford on the 24th of November following. The attainder against the Despensers was reversed in 1398. The intense hatred with which the barons regarded the Despensers was due to the enormous wealth which had passed into their hands, and to the arrogance and rapacity of the younger Hugh.
The younger Despenser left two sons, Hugh (1308-1349), and Edward, who was killed at Vannes in 1342.