Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Dover, Robert
DOVER, Captain ROBERT (1575?–1641), founder of the Olympic games on Cotswold Hills, son of John Dover, gent., of Norfolk, was probably born about 1575, and was an attorney at Barton-on-the-Heath, Warwickshire. At the end of a copy of ‘Annalia Dubrensia,’ 1636, in the British Museum, are manuscript verses by D'Avenant containing the couplet (printed in modern reprints):—
Dover that his Knowledge not Imploy's
T'increase his Neighbors Quarrels, but their Joyes.
With a footnote, ‘He was bred an attorney who never try'd but two causes, always made up the difference.’ Having a sufficient fortune he gave up his profession very early, and settled at Wickham [i.e. Winchcombe], building himself a house at Stanway, in the heart of Cotswold. Early in James I's reign (circa 1604) he founded the ‘Cotswold games,’ and directed them for nearly forty years. They were a protest against the rising puritanical prejudices. Having the king's license to select a fitting place, Dover chose the open country-side between Evesham and Stow-on-the-Wold, where a little acclivity, still called ‘Dover's Hill,’ marks the site. Endymion Porter [q. v.], groom of the bedchamber, furnished the captain with some of the royal clothes, hat, feathers, and ruff. Wood describes him mounted on a white horse as chief director of the games, and says that some of the gentry and nobility came sixty miles to see them. A castle of boards turning on a pivot was erected on the central height, and guns were fired from it to announce the opening of the sports. They consisted of cudgel-playing, wrestling, the quintain, leaping, pitching the bar and hammer, handling the pike, playing at balloon or hand ball, leaping over each other, walking on the hands, a country dance of virgins, men hunting the hare (which, by Dover's orders, was not to be killed), and horse racing on a course some miles long. These games, with the customary feasting in tents, were held on Thursday and Friday in Whitsun-week. Prizes of value were given, and so many that it is said that five hundred gentlemen wore ‘Dover's yellow favours’ a year after. The phrase ‘a lyon of Cotswolde’ occurs in John Heywood's ‘Proverbs,’ pt. i. c. i. (1545–6), in ‘Thersytes’ (1537), and in Harrington's ‘Epigrams,’ and probably refers to the famous ‘wild sheep of Cotswold.’ The familiar reference to coursing on ‘Cotsall’ in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ is not in the 4to, 1602, nor the reprint, 1619; it first appears in the folio of 1623. A small 4to vol. of thirty-five leaves, with a curious frontispiece of the sports and Dover on horseback, appeared in 1636, entitled ‘Annalia Dubrensia. Upon the yeerely celebration of Mr. Robert Dover's Olimpick Games upon the Cotswold Hills. Written by [thirty-three contributors], London, 1636’ (reprinted 1700 by Dr. Thomas Dover, by Dr. Grosart 1877, and by Mr. Vyvyan 1878). This book is full of quaint poetry, with anagrams, acrostics, and epigrams. Among the contributors are Drayton, Trussel, Feltham, Marmion, Ben Jonson, Thomas Heywood, and Randolph. The Grenville copy of this rare book has Dover's autograph and presentation entry. At the end Dover has ‘A Congratulatory Poem to his Poetical and Learned Friends, &c.,’ in which he defends his ‘innocent pastime’ against the puritan charge of being ‘a wicked, horrid sin.’ Somerville's ‘Hobbinol, or Rural Games’ has its action at Dover's Hill. Barksdale's ‘Nympha Libethris, or the Cotswold Muse,’ 1651, has slight allusion to the games. With the death of the founder and the cessation of prizes the games died out under the Commonwealth, to be revived in the reign of Charles II, and to continue till 1852.
Dover died in his house at Stanway, and was buried in the parish church 6 June 1641. By his wife, daughter of Dr. Cole, dean of Lincoln, he had one son, Captain John Dover, who fought under Prince Rupert, and was father of John Dover [q. v.]
[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 222; Visitation of Warwickshire, 1682; Bigland's Gloucestershire, i. 279; Rudder's Gloucestershire, 1779, pp. 24, 319, 691; Hunter's New Illustrations of Shakespeare, i. 204; Journal of Brit. Arch. Assoc. June 1869; Gosse's Seventeenth Century Studies; Graves's Spiritual Quixote, ch. x.; Annalia Dubrensia, 1636, reprint edited by Grosart, 1877; Huntley's Cotswold Dialect, 1868.]