Thomas Dancy

Sir Thomas Dancy, 6th Baronet (b. 18 October 1759) is the father of Julia, Duchess of Pennington. He is the father of two children including the Duchess; his youngest child, a second daughter, is deceased. An affable and generous man, he and his wife are well-known and very popular in Bath, where they go every year for the season.

Thomas is a non-player character created by Casey.

Character

Thomas Dancy is very much like most of his ancestors in nature, easy-going and unambitious. The Dancys had early on amassed a large fortune through military endeavours, leading to the creation of the baronetcy, but since then had not taken the usual route of involvement in politics, volunteered as Justices of the Peace, or distinguished themselves otherwise. Nevertheless, they attended very diligently to their estate, Weston House near Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, and so acquired a reputation of unpretentious gentility, subtle respectability, and good fortune. The 3rd Baronet was lucky enough to be the recipient of a windfall profit from an heirless friend, in the form of a neighbouring estate that allowed the family to massively expand their income, but the lifestyle of the family did not change much. Therefore, when Thomas decided to marry the daughter of an impoverished baron, his family was simply happy for him. Eleanor Dancy née Worthen was a beautiful bride, kind if frivolous and occasionally shallow in perspective and intelligence, but she was eminently suited for Thomas's generous and soft-hearted person. They were married on 16 July 1785. The newlyweds wanted children and almost a year after their marriage they were blessed with their first child, Everett William (b. 30 March 1786). The following year they welcomed Julia Rebecca (b. 15 May 1787) and two years after that they had their last child, Rachel Louise (b. 12 August 1789, d. 21 December 1801).

Apart from the death of his youngest child, Thomas's life has been largely untroubled and overwhelmingly happy. Since he is not a man of great wit himself, he is proud of his children and of their reported cleverness, which partly explains his extreme indulgence. He is contentedly married to his wife Eleanor and even went as far to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary in 1810 with a trip to Ireland, unusual among marriages of the time. As for his children, he has a lenient attitude towards his son's travelling and views it as educational, when other fathers would have recalled their heirs long ago. He is entirely oblivious to Julia's disdain and still occasionally flabbergasted that she married a duke.