PALMER, RICHARD, M.D. (d. 1625), physician, was a native of London. He entered Christ's College, Cambridge, and there graduated B.A. in 1579. He migrated to Peterhouse, and there became M.A. in 1583. He received a license to practise in London from the College of Physicians 9 April 1593, and was elected a fellow in February 1597. He was nine times censor between 1599 and 1619, was treasurer from 1621 to 1624, and president in 1620. On 5 Nov. 1612 he attended with Dr. John Giffard at the bedside of Henry, prince of Wales. Several long consultations were held with Sir Theodore Mayerne [q. v.] Dr. John Hammond, Dr. Henry Atkins [q. v.] and Dr. Butler, and in the presence of Sir Thomas Challoner and Sir David Murray (1567–1629) [q. v.] in October 1612, and the result was that, on the opinion of the majority, a prescription known as diascordium was given to the prince, with no good effect, for he died next day. Palmer was present at the post-mortem examination, and in the original report his signature stands fourth of the six physicians. In the report, as printed by Mayerne, his name is last. He died early in 1625.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. i. 110; Mayerne's Opera Medica, London, 1701; original record in Record Office; State Papers, lxxi. 29.]
PALMER, ROGER, Earl of Castlemaine (1634–1705), diplomatist and author, was eldest son of Sir James Palmer [q. v.] of Hayes, Middlesex, and Dorney Court, Buckinghamshire, by his second wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir William Herbert, K.B., created Lord Powis in 1674, and relict of Sir Robert Vaughan of Llydiarth, Montgomeryshire.
Roger Palmer was born at Dorney Court on 3 Sept. 1634, and was educated at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, which he entered on 25 March 1652. On 29 Oct. 1656 he was admitted a student at the Inner Temple, but was not called to the bar. An ardent loyalist, he was prevented only by his youth from serving under the royal standard during the civil war, and hazarded his life in the plots that preceded the Restoration. On 14 April 1659 he married, at the church of St. Gregory by St. Paul's, London, Barbara [see Villiers, Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland], only daughter of William Villiers, first viscount Grandison (Chester, Westminster Abbey Registers, p. 330 n.) Upon the Restoration Mrs. Palmer became the mistress of the king, who, by patent of 11 Dec. 1661, raised her husband, then M.P. for New Windsor, to the Irish peerage by the title of Earl of Castlemaine, co. Kerry, with remainder limited to his issue by her. This was done solely to propitiate the mistress, whose jealousy was inflamed by the Portuguese match, and was so little appreciated by her husband that the honour was literally forced upon him, nor did he ever take his seat in the Irish House of Lords. The earl was a Roman catholic, and had his wife's first-born son, Charles Fitzroy [see Fitzroy, Charles, first Duke of Southampton], baptised by a priest, upon which the countess had him rebaptised by a minister of the church of England, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, on 18 June 1662. This occasioned a violent domestic quarrel, which ended in Lady Castlemaine deserting her husband, and the latter going abroad. He travelled in France and Italy, and cruised in the Levant, in the Venetian squadron commanded by Admiral Andrea Cornaro (1664). He also served in the Duke of York's fleet during the Dutch war (1665–7), on which he wrote, in French, a memoir, translated into English by Thomas Price under the title ‘A short and true Account of the Material Passages in the late War between the English and Dutch,’ London, 1671; 2nd edit. 1672, 8vo.
On the outbreak of the storm of anti-popish fanaticism which followed the fire of London, Castlemaine published ‘The Catholique Apology,’ a manly and eloquent vindication of the loyalty of Roman catholics, which involved him in controversy with William Lloyd [q. v.] afterwards bishop of St. Asaph (cf. bibliographical note infra). About this time he was formally separated from the countess, and in 1668 he accompanied Sir Daniel Harvey on his mission to the Porte. From Constantinople he passed into Syria, and, travelling along the northern coast of Africa, returned to Europe by Tangier. He was in the Netherlands during the second Dutch war, in which he probably saw service. He returned to England in the autumn of 1677, and on 25 Oct. of the following year was denounced to the House of Commons as a jesuit by Titus Oates [q. v.] who swore that he had seen in the hands of Richard Strange, late provincial of the order of Jesus in England, a divorce from his wife granted to Castlemaine by the Roman curia, and that he had heard Castlemaine ‘declare his approbation of the White Horse consult about the king's death.’ After an examination before justices of the peace he was arrested and committed to the Tower (31 Oct.), but was admitted to bail on 23 Jan. 1678–9. While awaiting his trial he published a narrative of the sufferings of former victims, entitled ‘The Compendium; or a Short View of the late Tryals in relation to
