William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster

William Fermor, 1st Baron Leominster (1648–7 December 1711), was an English connoisseur.

Fermor was the eldest son of Sir William Fermor, 1st Baronet, of Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, by Mary, daughter of Hugh Perry of London and widow of Henry Noel, second son of Edward Noel, 2nd Viscount Campden. He succeeded as second baronet in 1661, was elected MP for Northampton in 1671 and again in 1679, and was elevated to the peerage, 12 April 1692, by the title of Baron Leominster of Leominster, Herefordshire. He was thrice married: first to Jane, daughter of Andrew Barker of Fairford, Gloucestershire, by whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who died unmarried in March 1705; secondly, to the Hon. Catherine Poulett, daughter of John Poulett, 3rd Baron Poulett, by whom he had Mary, married to Sir John Wodehouse, 4th Baronet, of Kimberley, Norfolk; and, thirdly, to Lady Sophia Osborne, daughter of Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, and widow of Donogh, Lord Ibrackan, grandson and heir of Henry O'Brien, 7th Earl of Thomond. By this lady, who survived until 8 December 1746, he had a son, Thomas, and four daughters.

Leominster built the house and planned the gardens and plantations at Easton Neston. The house was completed by Nicholas Hawksmoor in 1702, about twenty years after the erection of the wings by Sir Christopher Wren. He adorned the whole with part of the Arundel marbles which he had purchased and which his son attempted to restore with the assistance of the Italian sculptor Giovanni Battista Guelfi, 'a scholar of Camillo Rusconi.'^[1] The collection was afterwards greatly neglected. ‘Coming back,’ writes Horace Walpole to George Montagu on 20 May 1736, ‘we saw Easton Neston, where in an old greenhouse is a wonderful fine statue of Tully haranguing a numerous assembly of decayed emperors, vestal virgins with new noses, Colossus's, Venus's, headless carcases, and carcaseless heads, pieces of tombs, and hieroglyphics’. The marbles were presented in 1755 to the University of Oxford by Henrietta Louisa, countess of Pomfret. A description of Easton Neston and its art treasures is included in the Catalogue of the Duke of Buckingham's Pictures, 4to, London, 1758 (pp. 53–66).

Leominster died on 7 December 1711, and was succeeded by his only son, Thomas, who was advanced to an earldom 27 December 1721 by the title of Earl of Pomfret, or Pontefract, Yorkshire.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Fermor, William (d.1711)". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.