DOVER, GEORGE JAMES WELBORE AGAR-ELLIS, Baron (1797-1833), English man of letters, born on the 14th of January 1797, was the only son of the 2nd Viscount Clifden. He was educated at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1818 he was returned to parliament as member for Heytesbury. He afterwards represented Seaford (1820), Ludgershall (1826) and Okehampton (1830). He seconded Canning’s motion in 1822 for a bill to relieve the disabilities of Roman Catholic peers, and consistently supported liberal principles. In party politics, however, he took little interest, but he zealously advocated in parliament and elsewhere that state encouragement should be given to the cause of literature and the fine arts. In 1824 he was the leading promoter of the grant of £57,000 for the purchase of John Julius Angerstein’s collection of pictures, which formed the foundation of the National Gallery. On the formation of Lord Grey’s administration, in November 1830, he was appointed chief commissioner of woods and forests, but was compelled by delicate health to resign it after two months’ occupancy. In June 1831, during the lifetime of his father, he was raised to the House of Lords, receiving an English peerage with the title of Baron Dover. He was president (1832) of the Royal Society of Literature, a trustee of the British Museum and of the National Gallery, and a commissioner of public records. He died on the 10th of July 1833. Lord Dover’s works are chiefly historical, and include The True History of the Iron Mask, extracted from Documents in The French Archives (1826), Inquiries respecting the Character of Clarendon (1827), and a Life of Frederick II. (1831). He also edited the Ellis Correspondence (1829) and Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann (1833).
DOVER, HENRY JERMYN, Earl of (c. 1636-1708), was the second son of Sir Thomas Jermyn, of Rushbroke, Suffolk, elder brother of Henry Jermyn, earl of St Albans (q.v.). Jermyn surpassed his uncle, St Albans, in reputation for profligacy, figuring frequently as “the little Jermyn” in the Grammont Memoirs, as the lover of Lady Castlemaine, Lady Shrewsbury, Miss Jennings and other beauties of the court of Charles II. He was also a noted duellist and a lifelong gambler. While the court was in exile, he obtained a post in the household of the duke of York, to whom he became master of the horse at the Restoration. Being a Roman Catholic he enjoyed a position of influence with James II., who on his accession raised Jermyn to the peerage as Baron Dover in 1685, and appointed him lieutenant-general of the royal guard in 1686. At the Revolution, Dover adhered to James, whom he followed abroad, and in July 1689 the deposed sovereign created him Baron Jermyn of Royston, Baron Ipswich, Viscount Cheveley and earl of Dover; these honours being among the “Jacobite peerages” which were not recognized by the English government, though Jermyn became generally known as the earl of Dover. He commanded a troop at the battle of the Boyne; but shortly afterwards made his submission to William III. He succeeded his brother Thomas as 3rd Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury in 1703, and died in 1708. As he left no children by his wife, Judith, daughter of Sir Edmund Poley, of Badley, Suffolk, his titles became extinct at his death.
See Samuel Pepys, Diary, edited by H. B. Wheatley, 9 vols. (London, 1893); Anthony Hamilton, Memoirs of Grammont (Bohn edition, London, 1846); J. S. Clarke, Life of James II., 2 vols. (London, 1816); Narcissus Luttrell, Brief Relation of State Affairs 1678-1714, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1857).
DOVER, ROBERT (1575-1641), English captain and attorney, is known as the founder and director for many years of the “Cotswold Games,” which he originated as a protest against the growing Puritanism of the day. These sports, which were referred to by contemporary writers as “Mr Robert Dover’s Olimpick Games upon the Cotswold Hills,” consisted of cudgel-playing, wrestling, running at the quintain, jumping, casting the bar and hammer, hand-ball, gymnastics, rural dances and games and horse-racing, the winners in which received valuable prizes. They continued from about the year 1604 until three years after the death of Dover, which took place in 1641. They were revived for a brief period in the reign of Charles II.
DOVER, the capital of Delaware, U.S.A., and the county seat of Kent county, on the St Jones River, in the central part of the state, about 48 m. S. of Wilmington and about 9 m. from Delaware Bay. Pop. (1890) 3061; (1900) 3329 (772 negroes); (1910) 3720. Dover is served by the Philadelphia, Baltimore & Washington railway (Pennsylvania system). The state house, built about 1722 for a court house, was remodelled for its present purpose in 1791; it contains the state library, which in 1908 had about 50,000 bound volumes. Dover is the seat of the Wilmington Conference Academy (Methodist Episcopal); and about 2 m. N. is the state college for coloured students (co-educational; opened in 1892), an agricultural and manual training school. The surrounding country is largely devoted to the raising of small fruit. Among the manufactures are canned fruit and meat (especially poultry), timber, machine shop products, baskets and crates, and silk. The town was laid out in 1717; in 1777 it replaced New Castle as the capital of the state, and in 1829 it was incorporated as a town. Dover was the birthplace of the American patriot, Caesar Rodney (1728-1784), whose home near Dover is still standing.
DOVER, a seaport and municipal and parliamentary borough of Kent, England, one of the Cinque Ports, 76 m. E.S.E. of London by the South-Eastern & Chatham railway. Pop. (1891) 33,503; (1901) 41,794. It is situated at the mouth of a small stream, the Dour, whose valley here breaches the high chalk cliffs which fringe the coast on either hand. It is an exceptionally healthy locality, and the steep shore and open downs make it an agreeable summer resort. The better residential quarters lie along the seaboard and on the higher ground, notably on a western spur of the Castle Hill. The dominant object of the place is the castle, on the east height, 375 ft. above sea-level, between which and the batteries on the western heights lies the old town. The castle occupies a space of 35 acres. Within its precincts are a Roman pharos or lighthouse, still exhibiting the Roman masonry; the ancient fortress church (St Mary in Castro); some remains of the Saxon fort; and the massive keep and subsidiary defences (such as the Constable’s, Avranche’s, and other towers) of the Norman building. The church, substantially unaltered, forms an almost unique Christian relic. It has been called Roman, but is later. It is cruciform in shape, and the walls are built mainly of flint, but jambs and arches are formed of Roman bricks. At the end of the 12th century it was remodelled and given an Early English character. In the beginning of the 18th century it was dismantled and turned into a storehouse; and so continued until 1863, when, having been restored by Sir G. G. Scott, it was again opened for divine service, and is now the chapel of the castle garrison.