The Roper family is an English
aristocratic family that can be traced back to 1066 following the
Norman Conquest by residing in
Derbyshire. Upon the accession of
James I, John Roper was the first of the gentry in
his county to proclaim the new king, for which service he was knighted in 1616 (although according to other sources he may have already been knighted by
Queen Elizabeth in 1587) and raised to the peerage as Lord Teynham on the same day. His contribution of £10,000 to the new king's coffers may also have played a role in his elevation to the nobility.
Ned Wymarke joked that he was "Baron of Ten M", 10 thousand pound. According to
Gardiner, however, Roper's ennoblement was not any sort of sign of gratitude from the king; rather, it was granted (after the payment of £10,000) as a way to induce Roper to relinquish an office he held in the
King's Bench. King James hoped to grant the office to his grasping favourite,
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, and viewed Roper as an obstacle to the plan. The first Baron's great-great-grandson, the fifth Baron, served as
Lord Lieutenant of Kent. The latter's third son, the eighth Baron, married, as his second wife, Anne Barrett-Lennard, 16th Baroness Dacre. His eldest son from this marriage, Charles Roper, was the father of Trevor Charles Roper, 18th Baron Dacre, and Gertrude Trevor Roper, 19th Baroness Dacre (see the
Baron Dacre for more information). His youngest son from this marriage, Reverend Richard Henry Roper, was the great-great-great-grandfather of the historian
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton. The eighth Baron was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage to Catherine Smythe, the ninth Baron. He died unmarried and was succeeded by his younger brother, the tenth Baron. The latter's grandson, the fourteenth Baron, assumed in 1788 by Royal licence the surname of Curzon in lieu of his patronymic but in 1813 he resumed by Royal licence his original surname of Roper in addition to that of Curzon. His great-great-grandson, the nineteenth Baron, served as Deputy
Chairman of Committees in the
House of Lords from 1946 to 1959. the title is held by the twenty-first Baron, who succeeded in that year. ==Barons Teynham (1616)==