More than once spies were despatched from England to Spain to gain some insight into her supposed intrigues with the catholic church. At least four popes—Gregory XIII, Sixtus V, Clement VIII, and Paul V—personally corresponded with her. All catholics who came to Spain from England received a welcome at her house, and were provided according to their needs with food, clothes, or money. She used all her influence at court to procure the release of such fugitives as were imprisoned on their arrival; on one occasion she obtained freedom for thirty-eight Englishmen imprisoned at Seville, and among others who owed their release to her intercession was Sir Richard Hawkins. In all matters the piety of the Duchess of Feria took a practical form. She took the habit of the third order of St. Francis, and wore it and the scapulary as long as she lived. Every week, and sometimes oftener, she supplied a supper to a monastery of this same order, of which both she and her husband, while he lived, were generous patrons. They founded and built the monastery of Our Lady de Monte-Virgine, near Villalva, and repaired at considerable expense the houses of St. Onophrio de la Lapa and Our Lady del Rosario (Dominican). On the death of her grandmother, Jane, lady Dormer, which took place in 1571, at Louvain, the duchess caused a marble tomb to be built over her remains in the chapel of the Carthusians of that place, and devised a sum of a hundred florins to be paid annually to the order. Evidence is not entirely wanting that the ambition of the duchess was not only ecclesiastical but personal. In a confession made in 1592 to the lord keeper, Puckering, George Dingley, an imprisoned catholic, stated that a report having spread abroad that the Duke of Parma would be removed from his position as governor of Flanders, the Duchess of Feria made suit of the king that she might be appointed in his place. She then took measures to have her son appointed general of the army then preparing, and her wishes were about to be carried into effect when the king was informed that the scheme was an English papist plot, and put an end to the arrangements, ordering the duchess to keep her house. The only support to this improbable story is a letter written more than thirty years previously by Sir John Legh to Elizabeth, informing her that the then Count of Feria was very anxious his wife should have the regency of the Low Countries. The remaining years of her life were uneventful, and were passed in Spain. In 1609 she broke her arm by a singular accident, and never again fully recovered her health. She looked forward to death with remarkable equanimity, wearing a death's head fastened to her beads and causing a coffin to be made and kept in the house. For the twelve months preceding her death, which took place on 13 Jan. 1612, at Madrid, she was bedridden and gave her whole mind to religious works and exercises. There were with her to her end two members of the Society of Jesus, four Franciscan friars, one Dominican, and her private chaplain. The body was conveyed to Zafra and interred there with prolonged ceremonies in the monastery of St. Clara. The duchess is thus described by her servant, Henry Clifford: ‘She was somewhat higher than ordinary; of a comely person, a lively aspect, a gracious countenance, very clear-skinned, quick in senses; for she had her sight and hearing to her last hour. Until she broke her arm she was perfect in all her parts; her person venerable and with majesty; all showed a nobility and did win a reverent respect from all. I have not seen of her age a more fair, comely, and respectful personage, which was perfected with modest comportment, deep judgment, graceful humility, and true piety.’
[The Henry Clifford who wrote the words just quoted was the author of a biography of the Duchess of Feria, preserved in the possession of the Dormer family at Grove Park, and first published in 1887 under the editorship of the Rev. Joseph Stevenson, S. J. Clifford did not enter the service of the duchess till 1603, but he soon won her fullest confidence, and there is some internal evidence that the biography was projected under her direction. The manuscript as it stands was written in 1643, but it was probably prepared long before, and it remains the principal authority for the facts in the life of its subject. It is lacking in arrangement and sense of proportion; it is rather an ecstatic eulogy than a sober narrative, and it is too thickly coloured by the religious sympathies of the writer. But, outside of some chrnological inaccuracies, there is no reason for doubting the general correctness of the facts related. Also: Cal. State Papers (Foreign, 1558–74, passim, and Dom., 1547–1613, passim); Fuller's Worthies, ed. 1662, p. 126; Collins's Peerage, ed. Brydges, vii. 69.]
DORMER, JOHN (1636–1700), jesuit, whose real name was Huddleston, was a son of Sir Robert Huddleston, knight. According to his own statement he was born in the village of Cleovin [Clavering ?], Essex, on 27 Dec. 1636, and brought up in London till his twelfth year, when he was sent to the college of St. Omer. Afterwards he entered the English college, Rome, on 6 Sept. 1665. He left that institution to join the novitiate at Bonn in 1656, and in 1673 he became a
