Damer, Joseph (c.1630–1720), land agent and moneylender, was born at Godmanston in Dorset, to John Damer, of a landowning family established in Somerset and Dorset, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. William Maber. The couple also had several daughters and five younger sons. One of Joseph's brothers, Edward, chaplain to the Jersey garrison under the protectorate, was deprived at the restoration; another brother, George, had two sons who inherited Joseph's fortune.
Nothing is known of his early life and education, and his career before his arrival in Ireland is obscure. Hutchins's somewhat implausible account has been repeated by most subsequent writers, though without acknowledgement. It says that he commanded a troop of horse under Oliver Cromwell (qv), who regarded him highly enough to send him twice to negotiate secretly with Cardinal Mazarin. On Cromwell's death he is supposed to have gone to France with his friend Sir William Lockhart, English ambassador to the French court, and to have attended the wedding of Louis XIV in 1660. After the restoration, apprehensive about remaining in England on account of his former connections, he is said to have sold some of his lands in Somerset and Dorset, and to have purchased estates cheaply in Ireland. This account, perhaps based on family tradition, is not corroborated.
It is certain that he came to Ireland after the restoration, and he appears in 1667 as land agent to Erasmus Smith (qv), a prominent Cromwellian adventurer, who had acquired large estates in Tipperary. Damer settled at Shronell, in the same county, where he acquired estates of his own and established himself as a moneylender, lending to other landowners on mortgages.
He belongs to a small group of historical figures who appear in Irish folklore, and is the subject of an enduring tradition especially in Munster. His wealth (there are many stories of ‘Damer's gold’) and his miserliness both became proverbial. It is not only folk tradition which makes him a miser; Jonathan Swift (qv) satirised him for the same reason in an elegy and epitaph, published in the month of his death. Folklore sometimes makes him a chandler in Cromwell's army. Though there is no direct evidence for this in Damer's case, Erasmus Smith, with whom he was associated, was an army contractor on a large scale.
Despite his reputation for miserliness, Damer was a benefactor of presbyterianism and, by some accounts, unitarianism. He and his nephew John (1673?–1768) were among the trustees and managers of the General Fund established in 1710 to support the protestant dissenting interest; another fund was established in 1718 to support the congregation in New Row in Dublin. Joseph was an associate of prominent dissenting clergy, including Nathanael Weld and Daniel Williams (qv), who appointed him an executor of his will. John Damer was also a benefactor of the unitarian congregation in Clonmel, while his uncle Joseph bequeathed £500 to the Blue Coat School in Dublin. Later in the eighteenth century methodism enjoyed Damer patronage in Tipperary, while the Damer name continues to be associated with the unitarian church in Dublin.
Damer is supposed to have conducted his moneylending business from a tavern in Fishamble Street in Dublin. He was said to have been at least 90 years old when he died on 6 July 1720, at his house in Smithfield; he was buried in St Paul's churchyard in Dublin. While he did not seek public attention, he was a well-known figure by the time of his death. A contemporary obituary stating that he died worth £340,000 may be doubted, but his will referred to lands in the cities of Dublin, Cork and Limerick and in nine counties while one of his nephews received £20,000 in cash. The fortune was the basis of the Damer family dynasty, which maintained a modest position in the public life of both Ireland and England for the remainder of the eighteenth century.
John Damer, eldest son of Joseph's brother George, resided at Shronell, and was Joseph's residuary legatee. His brother Joseph (1676–1737) sat in the British parliament for Dorchester (1722–7) and in the Irish parliament for County Tipperary (1735–7). His eldest son, again Joseph (1718–98), also sat in the British parliament between 1741 and 1762, and inherited his uncle's estates. He was created Baron Milton, first in the Irish peerage in 1753 and subsequently in the British peerage in 1762; and earl of Dorchester in 1792. On his death in 1798, he was succeeded by his son George (1746–1808), who had been a member of the Irish and British parliaments, and chief secretary during Earl Fitzwilliam's (qv) lord lieutenancy in 1794–5.
The Damer of folklore tradition is a conflation of the first Joseph with his nephew John. Thus, while Damer built himself a house in County Tipperary in the seventeenth century, the traditional stories about Damer's Court (or Damerville) relate to a house built by John after his uncle's death. John's brother Joseph built the Damer House in Roscrea, which was saved from demolition in the 1970s and subsequently restored. The Guildhall Library, London, has Damer correspondence among its Erasmus Smith papers.