Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/273

 estimated to be one tenth of the value of his estate (Calendar of the Committee for Compounding, p. 1473; Cal. Clarendon Papers, i. 348, 368).

Now that the war was over, Dorchester returned to his studies. ‘From his youth he was always much addicted to books; and when he came from Cambridge, for many years he seldom studied less than ten or twelve hours a day; so that he had early passed though all manner of learning both divine and human.’ For some time he lived at Worksop Manor, lent him by the Earl of Arundel, as two of his own houses had been ruined by the war. But after the king's death he found there was no living in the country, as every mechanic now thought himself as good as the greatest peer; and in November 1649 he removed to London. Sedentary habits and trouble of mind had made him ill, and his illness suggested to him the study of physic, which he henceforth pursued with the greatest application (, p. 286). With the study of medicine he combined the study of the law, and on 30 June 1651 he was admitted to Gray's Inn (, Gray's Inn Register, p. 258; Nicholas Papers, i. 306). On 22 July 1658 he was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians (, i. 282, 291). The royalists regarded his conduct as a scandal to his order, and spread a report that he had killed by his prescriptions his daughter, his coachman, and five other patients (Cal. Clarendon Papers, iii. 412). The official journal of the Protectorate, however, praised him for giving the nobility of England ‘a noble example how to improve their time at the highest rate for the advancement of their own honour and the benefit of mankind’ (Mercurius Politicus, 22–29 July 1658).

At the Restoration, in spite of Dorchester's compliance with the Protector's government, he was readmitted to the privy council (27 Aug. 1660), and remained a member of that body till 1673. He was also appointed one of the commissioners for executing the office of earl marshal (26 May 1662, 15 June 1676), became a fellow of the Royal Society (20 May 1663), and accepted the post of recorder of Nottingham (7 Feb. 1666). He died on 8 Dec. 1680 at his house in Charterhouse Yard, and was buried at Holme Pierrepont.

Dorchester was a little man, with a very violent temper. On 11 Dec. 1638 he obtained a pardon for an assault he had committed on one Philip Kinder within the precincts of Westminster Abbey and in time of divine service (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1637–8 p. 16, 1638–9 p. 412). On 14 Dec. 1641 the House of Lords committed him to custody for words used during a debate (Lords' Journals, iv. 475). At some subsequent date he had a quarrel with Lord Grandison, from whom he received a beating. In March 1660 Dorchester challenged his son-in-law, Lord Roos, to a duel, on account of his ill-treatment of Lady Roos. The two peers exchanged long and abusive letters, which they published. ‘You dare not meet me with a sword in your hand,’ wrote Dorchester, ‘but was it a bottle none would be more forward.’ ‘If,’ replied Roos, ‘by your threatening to ram your sword down my throat, you do not mean your pills, the worst is past, and I am safe enough’ (The Lord Marquesse of Dorchester's Letter to the Lord Roos, &c., 4to, 1660). On 19 Dec. 1667 Dorchester came to blows with the Duke of Buckingham at a conference between the two houses in the Painted Chamber. ‘The Marquis, who was the lower of the two in stature and was less active in his limbs, lost his periwig, and received some rudeness;’ but, on the other hand, ‘the Marquis had much of the duke's hair in his hands to recompense for the pulling off his periwig, which he could not reach high enough to do to the other’ (, Continuation of Life, § 978). The two combatants were committed to the Tower by the House of Lords, but released a few days later on apologising (Lords' Journals, xii. 52, 55).

Dorchester's pretences to universal knowledge exposed him to the ridicule of his contemporaries. Lord Roos, or rather Samuel Butler writing under the name of Lord Roos, told him, ‘You are most insufferable in your unconscionable engrossing of all trades.’ Dorchester himself regarded medicine as his most serious accomplishment. In 1676 he brought an action of scandalum magnatum against a man who said, to one that asserted that the marquis was a great physician, that all men of the marquis's years were either fools or physicians (Hatton Correspondence, i. 124). According to his biographer, Dr. Goodall, he hastened his end by taking his own medicines; but he was nearly seventy-four when he died. Dorchester left a library valued at 4,000l. to the College of Physicians, which also possesses a portrait and a bust of the marquis (, i. 282, 291).

He married twice: (1) Cecilia, daughter of Paul, viscount Bayning, who died 19 Sept. 1639. By her he had two daughters—Anne, married to John Manners, lord Roos, from whom she was divorced by act of parliament in 1666; and Grace, who died unmarried in