PALMER, ELEANOR, Lady (1720?–1818), born about 1720, was the daughter and coheiress of Michael Ambrose, a wealthy brewer, second son of William Ambrose of Ambrose Hall, co. Dublin. During the period of Lord Chesterfield's viceroyalty of Ireland (1745-7), Miss Ambrose was pre-eminent among the court beauties. Chesterfield himself greatly admired her, and was said to have called her 'the most dangerous papist in Ireland.' At a ball given at Dublin Castle on the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, when she appeared with an orange lily at her breast, the lord lieutenant improvised the lines:
Say, lovely Tory, where's the jest?
Of wearing orange in thy breast,
When that same breast uncovered shows
The whiteness of the rebel rose?
In 1752, when the Gunnings were proving formidable rivals, Miss Ambrose was married to Roger Palmer of Castle Lackin, Mayo, and Kenure Park, co. Dublin, who was then member for Portarlington. He was created a baronet on 3 May 1777. By him she had three sons: Francis, who predeceased her; John Roger, the second baronet, who died 6 Feb. 1819; and William Henry, third baronet, who died 29 May 1840, leaving three sons and three daughters as the issue of his second marriage with Alice Franklin. Lady Palmer survived her husband, and, though rich, lived for some time before her death almost alone in a small lodging in Henry Street, Dublin. Here it was that Richard Lalor Shell visited her. He gave a highly coloured account of his visit, declaring that she was 'upwards of a hundred years old,' and was excessively vehement in her support of the catholic claims. With every pinch of snuff she poured out a sentence of sedition. A half-length portrait of Lord Chesterfield hung over the chimneypiece of the room.
Lady Palmer died at Dublin, in full possession of her faculties, on 10 Feb. 1818, aged 98. A pastel, seen at the Dublin National Portrait Exhibition in 1872, has since perished by fire. Seductive eyes, a dazzling complexion, and an arch expression, were the leading features of the portrait.
[Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 1892; Lodge's Genealogy of the Peerage; Burke's Romance of the Aristocracy, ii. 5-9; Shell's Sketches, Legal and Political, ed. Savage, i. 136- 138, the account being a reprint of an article in the New Monthly Mag. for February 1827 on the 'Catholic Bar;' Gent. Mag. 1818, i. 379; Miss Gerard's Celebrated Irish Beauties of the Last Century. 1895, pp. 14-28; Webb's Compend. Irish Biogr., art. 'Ambrose.']
PALMER, Sir GEOFFREY (1598–1670), attorney-general to Charles II, son of Thomas Palmer of Carlton, Northamptonshire, by Catherine, daughter of Sir Edward Watson of Rockingham in the same county, was born in 1598. Matriculating as a pensioner from Christ's College, Cambridge, Dec. 1612 (the same year as Miles Corbet, the regicide), he graduated B.A. in 1615–16 and M.A. in 1619. Admitted to the Middle Temple in June 1616, he was in 1623 called to the bar; he was elected treasurer of his inn in 1661. He was elected to the Long parliament for Stamford, Lincolnshire, and on 9 Feb. 1640–1 joined the committee for ecclesiastical affairs. As a manager of Strafford's impeachment he advocated, 2–3 April 1641, articles xv and xvi (of arbitrary government) with moderation. He signed the protestation of 3 May in defence of the protestant religion, but, on the passing of the act perpetuating the parliament, joined the little knot of ‘young men’ (among them Hyde and Falkland) who rallied to the king and formed his new council. Palmer protested with animation against Hampden's motion for the printing of the remonstrance in the course of the heated debate of 22–23 Nov. 1641, and in the excited temper of the house his protest was very nearly the cause of bloodshed (Harl. MSS. clxii. fol. 180); he was threatened with expulsion from the house and actually committed to the Tower, but was released on 8 Dec. After the vote for putting the militia ordinance into execution on 30 April 1642, Palmer withdrew from the House of Commons. He was a member of the royalist parliament which met at Oxford on 22 Jan. 1643–4. He was one of Charles's commissioners for the negotiation of the abortive treaty of Uxbridge, January–February 1644–1645, and a later negotiation which did not advance beyond the stage of overture (December 1645). He remained in Oxford during the siege, and on the surrender of the place (22 June 1646) had letters of composition for his estates. The assessment was eventually (September 1648) fixed at 500l.
On 9 June 1655 Palmer was committed to the Tower on suspicion of raising forces against the government, but was probably released in the following September.
On the Restoration Palmer was made attorney-general, 29 May 1660. About the same time he was knighted and appointed to
