Robert Dover (Cotswold Games)

Robert Dover (1575/82–1652) was an English attorney, author and wit, best known as the founder and for many years the director of the Cotswold Olimpick Games.

[1] Robert was probably born between 1575 and 1582 in Norfolk,[2] one of four children sired by a John Dover, but as the parish registers in Great Ellingham did not begin until 1630 it is impossible to be certain.

[11] Dover was known as a wit, and author of a lost poem The Wandering Jew: according to Peter Heylin, a pageant put on at Gray's Inn.

[2] After the inauguration of the Games, he obtained patronage from neighbour Endymion Porter, a well-connected courtier, who arranged for Dover to receive a cast-off set of royal garments to wear while presiding.

[3] Dover founded his annual Games held in the Cotswold hills above Chipping Campden in about 1612,[7] and presided over them for forty years.