James Bond and the Bond family of Dorset who were Catholic recusants and Jacobites

Commander Sir James Bond, KCMG, RNVR, was the fictional creation of British journalist Ian Fleming who portrays him as an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, commonly known as MI6).

He was created in January 1952 by Fleming while on holiday at his Jamaican estate, Goldeneye.

Fleming, a keen birdwatcher, had a copy of a book on ornithology at Goldeneye by an American named Bond. This partly gave him the idea. However, he already had the name in his mind because it was the name of a Dorset family whom he had known of when at school.

In the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond's family motto is found to be Orbis non sufficit ("The world is not enough").

In fact, however, there was another family called Bond who had their country seat in Dorset, only some miles from Durnford House, in Langton Matravers, the prep school where Fleming spent an unhappy few years of his childhood.

Their family motto was, indeed, Orbis non sufficit.

One of the family, John Bond, had been a spy for Sir Francis Drake in Elizabethan times.

William Bond, the current head of the family, had his ancestor's journal transcribed after rediscovering it in the family archives. He says Fleming would certainly have been aware of the family and its unusual motto.

The Bonds of Dorset, despite having had a family member who spied for Drake, were Catholic recusants and, later, Jacobites.

Their country seat is Hulme Priory, Wareham, Dorset, an old Cluniac priory later turned into a country house and not too far from the Weld family at Lulworth Castle, another recusant and Jacobite family. They are also both not far from the Royal Armoured Corps Training Centre at Bovington outside Wareham and the Royal Armoured Corps Gunnery School at West Lulworth.

The fictional James Bond may thus have been unconsciously based upon a Dorset Catholic family who supported King James II and VII and the Catholic Stuart dynasty.

Perhaps one can imagine James Bond being another "black sheep" of the family like his notional ancestor, John Bond, who spied for Drake.

Even renegade Catholics are often more interesting than those of other religions!

Ian Fleming, the British journalist who created James Bond.
He seems to have subconsciously had in his mind the Bonds of Dorset whose family motto, Orbis non sufficit ("The World is Not Enough"), appears in a Bond book, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
This family were Catholic recusants and Jacobites.

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