Digital edition first published: 1 Mar 2020             Updated: 12 Jul 2023                garydanvers@gmail.com

John Danvers, of Calthorpe

John Danvers, of Calthorpe, married his first wife, Alice Verney, about the year 1399, and by her had three sons and one daughter.  Of these the eldest was Robert, who, as we learn from the register of Lincoln’s Inn, was admitted a student of the Inn in the year 1420.  As students were at that period usually admitted when in their teens, it is probable that Robert was born about the year 1400, in the first year of the reign of Henry IV, and not improbably he left Banbury for London with his father in the autumn of the year 1420, when the latter was about to take his place in Parliament.

ROBERT DANVERS OF EPWELL AND CULWORTH

Robert Danvers, as his success in life gives evidence, inherited the business talents and energy of his father, and in the year 14285.1 we find that he had already won a good position in his profession, and was then one of the governors of Lincoln’s Inn.  In the year 1433 he had become officially connected with the office of the Privy Council, for there is in that year record of his having been implicated in the matter of an erasure made in an Act of the Council.  He was, however, fully exonerated from all blame by a special warrant under the privy seal.  The following year5.2 we find him buying, in conjunction with his father, the manor of Adderbury.  The next record that we find of him is in the year 1436, when he and Richard Drayton were members of Parliament for the county of Oxford, and three years after he and his father bought houses5.3 and land in Wycombe, Taplow and Hitcham.  At this time we have evidence of his advancement, holding, as he then did, the office of Common Sergeant to the City of London, whence, in the year 1442, he was promoted to the Recordership of the City, and in the year 1450 was raised to the bench.  Robert Danvers had also in the interval been made one of the King’s sergeants, and in the year 14455.4 sat as Member of Parliament for the City.  This period of his life is further interesting from his connection at the time with Archbishop Chicheley in the foundation by that prelate of the College of All Souls, Oxford.  The part which Robert Danvers took in the foundation of the college was a subordinate one, yet it was of such a character as to gain for him a recognised place amongst the early benefactors of the college.  But before we pass to the consideration of his work with Archbishop Chicheley and the history of the Parliaments in which he sat, it may be well to notice very briefly the course of public events during the earlier part of his career.

Contemporary Events

The records of the entries at Lincoln’s Inn commence in the first year of Henry VI, and that year is noted as the third Christmas of Robert Danvers and a few other students.  In the previous August, Henry V had died in the flower of his age, and had left the thrones of England and France to his son, an infant of nine months old.  The Duke of Bedford was Regent of France and England; his brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was Protector of the Kingdom; Thomas Longley, Bishop of Durham, was Chancellor, and Chicheley was Archbishop of Canterbury.  Closely associated with them in the government was Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, second son of John of Gaunt and Catherine Swinford, uncle, therefore, to the royal dukes.  Already had begun the rivalry for power between the Bishop and his nephew, the Duke of Gloucester; the former, in unison with the Duke of Bedford, leading the party which desired an honourable peace with France, the latter heading the popular war party, excited and sustained by the recollection of the triumphs of the late King, and unmindful of the miseries which the continuance of the war involved.  For a time the English arms were successful under the guidance of the Duke of Bedford and his generals, Suffolk, Talbot and Sir John Fastolf, but in the year 1429 a series of reverses began, when, under the leading of Joan of Arc, Orleans was relieved, and the Dauphin Charles was crowned at Rheims.  In the following year Henry VI, then but ten years of age, was crowned at Westminster, and shortly after was crowned in Paris.  The latter was, however, but an empty ceremony, for reverses in France and troubles at home were quickly gathering, and when in the year 1432 Bedford, the wisest and best of the English rulers, lost his wife, and shortly after offended his ally, the Duke of Burgundy, by marrying without his consent his ward, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the only remaining hope for the successful carrying on of the war was lost.  In 1435 Bedford died, and the young Duke of York, who took his place, was quite unable to cope with the arms of France and Burgundy.  And this brings us to the year 1436, when Robert Danvers was one of the knights of the county for Oxon.  The Parliament, called at Cambridge, met at Westminster in January, and was opened by a speech from John Stafford, Bishop of Bath and Wells, the then Chancellor.  For his text he took the words, ‘Corona regni in manu Dei,’ 5.5 on which he demonstrated that three sorts of men are crowned, viz., all Christians in their baptism, in token whereof they are anointed; all clerks in their orders, in token whereof they are shaven; and all kings in their coronation, who in token thereof wear a crown of gold.  Not improbably it was in this Parliament that Robert Danvers recommended himself to the notice of the Chancellor and the Archbishop; the former was, indeed, a lawyer by profession, and practised for some years, until Chicheley gave him his first promotion in the Church, making him Dean of Arches and a prebend of Lincoln.  Chicheley was at the time preparing for the foundation of a college at Oxford.  Born about the year 1362, he was one of the earliest, as he was one of the most eminent, of Wykeham’s scholars, and having, in no small measure owing to the education he had received at Winchester, attained to the highest place in the English Church, he determined to do honour to his early benefactor by extending to future generations opportunities such as he had himself enjoyed.  With this object in view he set about the foundation of a college at Oxford, which in the first instance was intended to be a chantry where prayers might be said for the souls of those who had fallen in the wars with France; hence its name, ‘All Souls’.  Chicheley commenced his work by buying ten acres of land in the north suburb of Oxford, the present site of St John’s College, but determining to build his college in another part of the city, he presented the ten acres to the Cistercians, and thereon was built St Barnard’s College, parts of which still exist in the buildings of St John’s College.  In the year 1437 Chicheley bought the land on which All Souls College now stands and began the erection of the college buildings.

OXFORD OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY

The Oxford of 1437, excepting in its eminence as a University, differed vastly from the Oxford of the present day.  Doyly’s great Norman castle then dominated the city, and near to it was the King’s hall or palace.  The two great monasteries of St Fridewside and Oseney took in a measure the place of the present colleges, while the four orders of mendicant friars and the Benedictines had their conventual schools.  Several portions of Merton College existed, New College had lately been built, but of the other pre-Chicheley colleges, as Balliol, Exeter, Oriel, Queens and Lincoln, the buildings5.6 were of a poor sort , and were probably wholly destroyed when those colleges were rebuilt.  Instead of the colleges, writes Professor Burrows, there were a multitude of closely-packed squalid habitations in irregular streets and lanes; interspersed with them were the little halls in which the scholars for the most part resided.  In the centre of Oxford, where university buildings now stand, thirty-two humble tenements in rows facing one another formed the ‘vicus scholarium’—school street.

Archbishop Chicheley and All Souls

No doubt Chicheley foresaw the troubles which were coming upon all religious foundations, partly because of the jealousy with which they were viewed by the people, who, suffering from poverty and famine, saw the Church alone retaining wealth and prosperity; and partly because, as Chicheley well knew, the monastic foundations had outlived the work they were intended to perform, and there was the fear lest with them might fall his and other collegiate foundations.  Therefore he determined, as far as possible, to secure his foundation by making the King a co-founder; this he did, and, further, he had the royal charter confirmed by the Pope.  The wisdom of his precautions was shown by subsequent events, for though the property of the college was for a time appropriated by Edward IV, it was restored to the foundation by Henry VII.

In order to carry out his plans, Chicheley needed a clever business man, one who sympathized with his views, and such a man he found in Robert Danvers, a well educated lawyer, a member of an ancient family, devoted to the Church by its history and by present associations, and a man of standing in the country which he had lately represented in Parliament.  And so it is that amongst the archives of All Souls5.7 are found many documents in which the name of Robert Danvers appears.  He seems to have been one of the trustees5.8 whom the Archbishop employed in buying property, which was made over to the King, to be returned by him to the college of which he was co-founder.

Prayers for Robert Danvers

A curious record remains of the estimation in which Robert Danvers’ services were held by the early members of All Souls, and it is as follows.  Until the time of Queen Elizabeth I and Archbishop Parker prayers and masses were daily offered, as the terms of the foundation demanded, in the college chapel for all souls, including those who had fallen at Agincourt and elsewhere during the wars with France, and for the souls of the early benefactors of the college.  But at the period just mentioned came Commissioners to the college to see that the reformed method of worship had been introduced, and that the ‘mass-books’ had been removed.  Troubled times ensued, for the warden and fellows abided by the old faith and mode of worship, but eventually the Commissioners prevailed, and of the service-books of the chapel nought remained but one ‘crumpled leaf,’ ‘decayed and mutilated,’ a relic which still exists amongst the college archives.  The leaf is evidently one torn from the service-book, which contained the names of benefactors, living and dead, for whom prayers were to be offered.  The living benefactors mentioned are Henry VI, Thomas (Bourchier), Archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Andrew, Dean of York, Robert Danvers . . .  i regis, Roger Keys, late Warden, John Byrkhede, Rector of Harrow, John Wraby, late Rector of Lymmenge, Thomas Ballard, Esq., and Phillippa his wife, William Halys and Matilda his wife, Dame Joan Croxford, sister of the college, and her sons and daughters.5.9

ROBERT DANVERS, RECORDER OF LONDON

Contemporary Events

In the year 1442 Robert Danvers was appointed to the Recordership of London, and three years later sat as member for London in the Parliament which was called in February of that year to sanction the King’s marriage with Margaret of Anjou.  This was the marriage which had been arranged as a basis for peace with France by the Minister, De la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, acting for the party of which Cardinal Beaufort had long been the head.  For peace was indeed very needful to the land; the finances were exhausted, while the sufferings of the people, the result of the long-continued wars abroad, and of famine and pestilence at home, were very great.  The peace was an inglorious one for England, and one that would scarcely have been accepted by the people, even in their low estate, had they been fully acquainted with its terms.  The King was to receive no dower with his bride, and all that remained of the English possessions in Anjou and Maine was to be delivered up to France.  And this settled, Suffolk brought over the young Princess, only sixteen years of age, and in April 1445, the King was married to her, and no doubt Robert Danvers took his part in the festivities with which the City welcomed the bride.5.10  The peace and the Queen were as yet new and popular, and the restoration of commerce with France was a great boon.  Suffolk gave account of his labours, and received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament.  Supported by the friendship of the Queen, who speedily obtained a complete mastery over her husband’s will, Suffolk became the dominating spirit in the government of the country, and on Cardinal Beaufort’s death, in the year 1447, became Chief Minister.

But the unpopularity which he had earned, mainly by the dishonourable marriage treaty that he had concluded, gave power to a new rival, who appeared upon the scene in the person of Richard, Duke of York, grandson of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, youngest son of Edward III.  The Duke was the head of the House of York, as the reigning King was representative and head of the line descended from John of Gaunt, the elder brother of Edmund, and Duke of Lancaster.

The loss of Rouen in the year 1449 was the immediate cause of the fall of Suffolk.  Sentenced by the King to banishment, he took ship for France, but was captured by an English ship of war, and after a mock trial, was beheaded by the sailors, who represented the popular feeling of the moment.

Jack Cade and Lord Saye

With Suffolk fell his colleagues:  De Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, who was put to death in an uproar at Portsmouth; Ascough, Bishop of Salisbury, who was murdered by his own followers; while a third, Lord Saye, was beheaded in the City at the command of Jack Cade, the leader of an insurrection of the men of Kent.  This Cade, assuming the name of Mortimer, and with the sympathy, if not at the instigation, of the Duke of York, had led the insurgents to London, and after the defeat of the royal troops at Sevenoaks, ‘upon the morne beyng the thirde daye of July and Frydaye, the sayd Capitayn entered again the cytie and causyd the Lorde Saye to be fette from the Tower and ladde unto the Guyldhall where he was araygned before the Mayre and other of the Kynges justices.’ 5.11  Amongst the justices, and probably because of his office as Recorder, the most prominent was Robert Danvers.5.12  Brought before the Court, Saye pleaded his right to be judged by his peers, upon hearing which Cade sent a company of his men into the hall, who seized the prisoner, ‘brought hym into ye Standarde in Chepe, where on he were half shryven, they strake of his hede, and that done pyght up upon a longe pole, and so bar it about with theym.’ With reference to this episode Foss writes: ‘Jack Cade forced Robert Danvers, the Recorder, to be head of a Commission of oyer and terminer, at which several noblemen and gentlemen were tried for high treason, and some of them were executed.’ 5.13

Judge of the Common Pleas

That Robert’s conduct while acting in this capacity was not displeasing to the Government appears from his being named on a commission in Kent, issued August 1, to try the adherents of Jack Cade, and from his being shortly raised to the Bench as a Judge of the Common Pleas.

Knighthood

Robert continued to sit as judge during the reign of Henry VI, and was, notwithstanding the Lancastrian tendencies of his house, reappointed on the accession of Edward IV in the year 1461.  Moreover, he was one of the noblemen and gentlemen who were chosen for the honour of knighthood on the occasion of the coronation of the Queen.5.14  His relatives, John Say and John Plomer were also amongst those who were knighted—‘knights of the sworde’  Metcalfe, in his Book of Knights, calls them; but we have not been able to discover any other ‘order of the sworde’ than a Swedish order founded in 1523, and refounded in 1748.

On Whit-Sunday eve the Queen entered London from Eltham Palace, the Mayor and City authorities meeting her at the foot of Shooters Hill, and conducting her through Southwark to the Tower.  That morning Edward kept court at the Tower, where he knighted thirty-two persons, among whom were five judges and six citizens, and behaved with the utmost popularity in order to obtain the favour of the citizens for his Queen.  The Queen was carried through the city to her palace of Westminster in a litter borne on long poles like a sedan chair, supported by stately pacing steeds.  The new-made knights all rode on this occasion in solemn procession before the Queen’s litter, and she was crowned next day with great solemnity in Westminster Abbey.5.15

About this period Sir Robert’s name is constantly found in the fines, and in the Customs and other rolls, exercising his functions as a judge at Westminster.  There and elsewhere, in the comparatively serene atmosphere of the law courts, he passed safely through the troubled times of the Wars of the Roses, during the whole continuance of which the ordinary apparatus of justice was uninterrupted; courts were held, and judges went their circuits as usual.5.16  Indeed, it would seem to have been a period of unusual litigation, attended no doubt often with violence.  For as property rapidly changed hands, the titles to it became insecure, and the process therefore by which a title was questioned was frequently the violent dispossession of the holder.  But still it was to the courts of law that the ultimate appeal was made.

Death

And so Robert Danvers was able to amass wealth and buy lands, and finally, in the year 1467, died some two years before the temporary success of Warwick and Queen Margaret had drawn the old King from the Tower, and for a short space had seated him once more upon the throne.

Purchase of Culworth Manors

The manor which Robert Danvers first bought on his own account was that of Culworth Pynkney, which he bought in the year 1437 from Alice, widow of John Corve, of Culworth.  The purchase is recorded in the Close Roll of 16 Henry VI, Part i, M. 10, where we find Alice Corve confirming to Richard Andrews, John Estby, Robert Danvers, and Thomas Haltheyn, the manor of Culworth and all lands and tenements pertaining to it in Culworth, Crowlton, and Coton.  The deed was executed at Culworth on May 8 of 16 Henry VI (1438).  As we learn from the original deeds, now in the possession of the British Museum, the manor was settled on John and Alice Corve at the time of their marriage by Richard and William Corve, who had purchased it from John Machyn.5.17  In the record of the sale the manor is called that of Culworth, but that it was the Culworth-Pynkney manor which Alice Corve sold we learn from the record of another purchase by Robert Danvers a few years later.  This was in 30 Henry VI (1452), when, as we learn from Northampton fine No. 51 of that year, Richard Andrews, Thomas Estby, and Thomas Haltheyn bought, for the sum of 300 marks, from John, son and heir of Walter Burnham and Felicia, his wife, the manor of Culworth called Mandeville, and a place in Culworth called Pynknesse.  Thus Robert Danvers again united in one ownership the two Culworth manors of Mandeville and Pynkney.5.18  It will be noticed that the name of Robert Danvers does not appear amongst the purchasers of the Mandeville manor, but the omission is explained by the fact that at the time when the matter of the sale came before the courts at Westminster, Sir Robert Danvers was one of the presiding judges; as such his name and that of Sir Peter Ardern appear amongst the justices mentioned in the fine.  But in the Close Roll of 32 Henry VI,5.19 we find Thomas Haltheyn relinquishing to Robert Danvers, Justice de Banco, his rights in the manor of Culworth Mandeville, and in the advowson of the Church of Culworth.  In the year 1442 Robert Danvers bought from the Ardern family5.20 the manor of Netherbury, in Sulgrave, a parish marching with that of Culworth.  By an indenture of May 23, 1445, Robert Arderne and John Halten ‘have sworne uppon ye booke that ye said manor is not entailed, and that ye said Robert Arderne nor his heirs shall never trouble nor suffer to be troubled nor vexed ye said Robert Danvers.’ 5.21  These three manors remained the property of the Danvers family for many generations, those of Culworth till the latter part of the eighteenth century, when, the male line of the elder branch failing, the manor and lands were left by Meriel Danvers, sister of the last baronet, to her cousins Rich, by whom they were subsequently sold to strangers.  Of the village and its history we shall have more to say hereafter—suffice it now that the village is in the county of Northampton, pleasantly situated on an eminence about seven miles west of Banbury, about four miles south of Byfield, whence Robert’s father had taken his first wife, Alice Verney, and about the same distance east of Prescote, where Robert’s brother, Richard Danvers, had his manor-house.

It is doubtful whether Robert ever lived at Culworth; he was essentially a London man, and probably found all the country air he needed or cared for when on circuit, or in the garden house at Southwark, which we find him buying in the year 1443, in conjunction with his colleague and brother-in-law, John Fray, Chief Baron of the King’s Exchequer, William Lee, and Richard Danvers.5.22  In Aske’s pedigree of the Danvers family, made in the year 1520, Robert Danvers is called ‘of Ipswell,’ and he must have held a portion if not the whole of the ancient possession of the family in that village, but we have not been able to learn to which of his heiresses the Epwell property went at his death—at any rate, Sir Robert was the last ‘Danvers at Ipswell.’  Besides the purchases already mentioned we find Robert Danvers, in the year 1462,5.23 buying land in Byfield, Charwelton, Aston, in Northampton, and land in Bourton Magna, and in Pykworth,5.24 Rutland.  He was also lord of the manor of Alcryngton, Oxon, and possessed the advowson of the church there.  On February 22, 1466, he presented Father William Oxenford,5.25 regular canon of the house of Wroxton, to the living.  This last property appears to have passed to the Frowyks, for in the year 1497 we find Richard Walker presented to the Church of Alkrynton by Henry Frowyk.5.25 Sir Robert had also, as we learn from his post-mortem inquisition, two acres of land in Bodicote, Oxon, which he held in capite; that he had landed properties in places other than those above mentioned we learn from incidental notices of his name in ancient records, and from the sales of his landed property which were made after his death by his heirs.

Death

Sir Robert Danvers died on April 17, 1467.  The post-mortem inquisition made of his property in Northamptonshire is missing, and that of Oxfordshire shows that in that county he only held of the Crown the small property at Bodicote.5.26  His heirs, according to the inquisition, were his daughters—Alice Burnaby, aged 25; Agnes Denys, aged 22; and Joan Danvers, aged 10.

Will

Sir Robert’s will, written in Latin,5.27 was made on April 15, 1467, two days before his death.  As this is the first will of the family to which we have had occasion to refer, it may be as well to explain that the registered copies of wills are at Somerset House in huge folios, each of which has a name, usually that of the testator whose will was the first entered in the volume.  The leaves are not paged, but folio’d, each folio containing several leaves.  ‘Godyn 18,’ as above, means that Sir Robert’s will is to be found amongst those copied into folio 18 of the volume named ‘Godyn.’ The will may be translated as follows:

‘In the name of God, Amen, I, Robert Danvers, Knt., one of the Justices of the Common Bench of the Lord the King, do make my will in manner following:

‘I give my body to be buried in the Church of the Holy Cross in West Smithfield, London, namely, in the chapel of the Blessed Mary there, near to the tomb where the body of Agnes, my wife, now lies buried.  I give to Joan, my daughter, towards her marriage, £200 out of my debts.

‘The residue of all my goods I place at the disposal of my executors, who are to dispose of them for my soul as they shall think best.

‘As executors, of this my will I appoint Lady Agnes Fray, widow (his sister), Richard Danvers, my brother, and George Burnaby (his son-in-law), and I ordain Master Simon Buryton, Confessor of the Household (hospicii) of the Lord the King, to be supervisor thereof.

‘I will that Henry Danvers, my son, have all my lands and tenements.

‘Witnesses: John Leynam, Knt. and Alderman of the City of London, William Baron, Esq., James John Chaplain, and Richard Padworth, scriptor, London.’

Robert Danvers desires in his will that he may be buried near his wife Agnes in the Church of the Holy Cross in West Smithfield—the church now known as St Bartholomew’s the Less—and Stowe in his annals mentions the tomb, and that Agnes was the daughter of Sir Richard Delabar.  The Delabars, Barres, or De-la-Beres, were a famous old Herefordshire family, from a stock which about the period of the Conquest came from La Barre in the Cotentin.5.28  Agnes was the widow of William Herle, of Stoke-Blys, Hereford, and must have been married to Sir Robert prior to the year 1441, as their eldest daughter was aged twenty-five and more when her father died in the year 1467.5.29

Katherine Barentyne

Sir Robert’s second wife was Katherine, widow of William Fetiplace, sister to Drew Barentyne, of Great Haseley, Oxon.  In many of the genealogies of the family she is spoken of as a daughter of Fetiplace, but the Berkshire Visitations and other documents5.30 afford conclusive evidence that her maiden name was Barentyne.5.31  In the year 1456 (35 Henry VI), we have Robert Danvers in a Bucks fine, which is evidently made by way of settlement of the manor of Doorton for life upon his wife Katherine, who was therefore the mother of Sir Robert’s youngest daughter.  Matthew Haye and John Cotesmore are associated with her in the fine; the latter was Katherine’s brother-in-law.

CHILDREN OF ROBERT DANVERS

Henry Danvers

By his first wife Sir Robert had a son, Henry, and two daughters, Alice and Agnes.  Henry, the only son, seems to have been of age when his father died, and if so must have been the son of the first wife.  This is the opinion of the early genealogists of the family, and his father wills to him his lands and tenements without appointing a guardian.  Moreover, two years previously, we find a release of land in Sulgrave to Sir Robert and his son Henry.5.32  Henry died shortly after his father, between the date of Sir Robert’s will and that of the post-mortem inquisition.

By his second wife Sir Robert Danvers had a daughter, Joan, who was ten years old at the time of her father’s death.  Some of the genealogists give Sir Robert a fourth daughter, Sybil, but there is no mention of her in either will or inquisition, and we have evidence31 that she was his step-daughter, child of William Fetiplace and Katherine Barentyne.  Harleian MS. 1,532, p. 40, and Harleian MS. 1139, p. 109, both copies of the Visitation of Berks of 1566, state that William and Katherine Fetiplace had two daughters, Anne and Sybil, of whom Anne married Dykes and Sybil married Umpton.5.33

Alice Danvers

Alice, Sir Robert’s eldest daughter, married George Burnaby, of Watford, who was one of Sir Robert’s executors.  The Burnabys were an old Northampton family descended from Eustace Arden, who held the manor of Watford temp. Henry II.  Sara, granddaughter of Eustace, one of four sisters, married John Burnaby, from whom was descended George Burnaby, who died 7 Henry VI.  It was his grandson who married Alice Danvers.5.34

Agnes Danvers

Agnes, the second daughter, married Sir Walter Denys,5.35 son of Morrys Denys, by his first wife Katherine, daughter of Sir Edward Stradling, and had by him three sons and three daughters.  One of the sons, Sir William, married the Lady Anne, daughter of William, Marquis of Berkeley, by whom he had a large family.

Joan Danvers

Joan, the third daughter, married Sir Henry Frowyke, of the old Middlesex family of that name.  The Frowykes were seated for some generations at South Mimms which, with Enfield, forms the most northern part of Middlesex.  In the parish church is the Frowyke chapel, or chantry, with the fine altar tomb of one of the family.  A moated site on the edge of Hadley Green is supposed to have been that of the Frowyke manor-house.5.36

RICHARD DANVERS OF PRESTCOTE

The life of Richard Danvers of Prescote was not so eventful as that of his brother, Sir Robert, but has its special interest, as he is in the direct line of descent of the present family, and was father of the Danvers who was the first member of the family to make Culworth his home.  Yet the life of Richard Danvers was not that of the mere country squire; like his father and his brethren, he was an energetic man of business, a man the key to whose life’s work may be found in a paragraph5.37 of Dr Bright’s history, which runs as follows:

‘Again, although the loss of France and the exclusive attention to home politics greatly diminished the national strength upon the sea, trade does not appear to have been seriously damaged.  At all events, it was so kept alive that upon the establishment of peace it revived with fresh vigour; and we are told that Edward IV himself engaged in the pursuit.  This trait is characteristic not only of the man, but of the time.  The pursuit of trade had risen greatly in estimation; great traders had become nobles, and Suffolk, the Prime Minister, was an example of the height to which such families might rise.’

That Richard was officially connected with trade we know, for he was a Comptroller of Customs, and as Wotton5.38 tells us that he acquired great wealth, we must presume that he did so in the way of trade, for he did not, like his father and grandfather, marry a fortune.

Purchases Land

The first notice that we have of him is in the Close Roll of 18 Henry VI, (1440) when we find him, in conjunction with his father, John Danvers, buying an angular tenement ‘in a new street of Deddington,’ a town on the Oxford road a few miles south of Banbury.  In the year 1449 we find John Dene,5.39 of Shutford, a village near Epwell, releasing to Richard Danvers, his lands in Shutford, Epwell, and in Clifton, a village a little, to the east of Deddington.

Contemporary Events

The same year Richard was a member of two Parliaments, sitting in the first for the borough of Horsham, in Sussex, and in the second for the borough of Shaftesbury, in Dorset.  In neither of those counties had the Danvers family at the time lands or material interests, and Richard’s election is an illustration of the fact that ‘the representation of the boroughs had at the time become a mere mockery.  Great nobles, neighbouring landowners, the Crown itself, seized on the boroughs as their prey and dictated the choice of their representatives.’ 5.40 In all probability de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, and Ascough, Bishop of Salisbury, two of Suffolk’s colleagues in the ministry, were the promoters of Richard’s representation of boroughs which were within their respective dioceses.  The first Parliament of the year was presided over by John Stafford, Chancellor, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and received a message from the Duke of Somerset, the King’s lieutenant in France, urgently demanding reinforcements as the French were preparing to invade Normandy.  Reinforcements were sent, but most of them were cut off, and the Duke was obliged to relinquish Caen, and, in short, all Normandy, thirty years after its conquest by Henry V.

The next Parliament, that of November, was a very stormy one.  After many adjournments which the Queen contrived with a view to saving Suffolk from the dangers which menaced him, both houses met in January, 1450, and having first insisted upon the dismissal of the Chancellor, Stafford, impeached the Duke of Suffolk, and procured the sentence of banishment, which was speedily terminated by his execution on his way to France.

Collector of Customs

When we next hear of Richard Danvers, he holds the office of Collector of Customs at Southampton, an office which he probably owed to the intercession of his brother, Robert, whose name constantly appears in the Customs Rolls of the period as trying revenue cases.  Collins, in his Baronetage, says that Richard was Comptroller of Customs in London, and it is quite probable that he was so; the ancient rolls still preserved testify to his office at Southampton.5.41  Though London was the chief port of England at this period, Southampton was the busiest southern harbour.  Its limits extended along the coast from Portsmouth to Weymouth, and it was the great emporium for imported wines and miscellaneous wares, and was the chief port of passage to France.  Here, too, came annually ‘the Venetian fleet, for English vessels did not even yet venture to the Mediterranean, and the stores of the southern European countries and the treasures of the East came to us through the agency of Venice.  Laden with silks, satins, fine damasks, cottons, and other then costly garments, together with rare Eastern spices and precious stones, camphor and saffron, this fleet sailed slowly along the shores of the Mediterranean, trading at the ports of Italy, South France and Spain, till it passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, and at length came up the Channel and reached our southern ports.  When the fleet reached the Downs it broke up for a time, some vessels putting into Sandwich and Rye and other towns, and a large number stopping at Southampton.’ 5.42

The local officer of the customs was originally called the ‘Customer;’ he was the Custos, or keeper of the King’s wools.  And he not only customed the merchant’s wool, but on occasion he seized the whole of it, and disposed of it in order that the King’s agents should supply the ready money which the necessities of the Crown might compel it to raise by resorting to obsolete prerogatives.  The Custos subsequently became the collector, of whom, as a rule, there were two at each port, and with them a comptroller.  These officials were drawn from the educated middle class, and so responsible was the post held by them, and so delicate the duties which they had to perform, that their appointment was notified by the King’s letters patent.5.43

Elizabeth Langston of Caversfield

Richard Danvers married, about the year 1445 (as we judge from his eldest son’s age, forty years and upwards in 1488), Elizabeth, daughter of John Langston, of Caversfield, Bucks, while his half-sister, Amys, married his wife’s brother, John Langston.  Richard and Elizabeth had two sons, Richard and John, and two daughters, Margery and Elizabeth, who all survived them.  We shall return presently to the Langston family and Caversfield.  Suffice it now that Caversfield is a small outlying parish of Bucks, some two miles north of Bicester, where was the priory in which, as we learn from his will, Richard Danvers had ‘a small place in which he used to dwell.’  Probably this was a cell within the priory buildings which Richard used for occasional retreats into religion, and in which possibly he found shelter when he and his family were harassed by their Yorkist foes.  The house, too, was one which, in addition to the regular inmates, admitted to the fraternity its benefactors and other persons.5.00  Such persons took an oath to bear good will to the house, to enter it if they entered religion, to make an annual payment, and to defend the house from all evildoers.  In return they were mentioned in the prayers of the brethren, and had license of burial in the church or cemetery.

Banaster’s Garden, Southwark

In 1444 we find5.45 Richard Danvers, in conjunction with his brother, Robert, and his brother-in-law, John Fray, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, buying a large garden with ponds, etc., in Southwark.  Whether this was a joint purchase, or whether Richard was only a trustee for his brother, does not appear, but in 15315.46 is a record of the gift of what was probably the same property; it is described as Banaster’s garden, containing three acres and a gate-house and cottages, with walls, hedges, ditches, wharves and steps to the garden, in the parish of St Margaret’s, Southwark, which formerly belonged to the Danvers family.  In the time of Richard Danvers, ‘Long Southwark’ was the street leading from old London Bridge south, to St Margaret’s Hill, where was the parish church of St Margaret’s.  Near the bank of the river, to the west of the street, was Winchester House, founded about 1107 by Bishop Walter Giffard, with its gardens, wharf, and water stairs, occupying a considerable part of the river bank near the bridge.  Here also were Rochester House and Waverley House, seats of the Bishops of Rochester and the Abbot of Waverley, and probably it was the residence in the locality of William Waynflete, their patron, which led to the purchase of a house and garden there by the Danvers family.  Here lived, from 1447 to 1486, William Waynflete, the princely Bishop of Winchester, long time Chancellor of the Realm; and no doubt members of the Danvers family took a part in the ceremonials and processions which the good Bishop much affected.  Thus, in the year 1452 we find him ordering the clergy of Southwark to assemble at 8 a.m., and to go in solemn procession, by St Margaret’s Church, as far as the monastery of Bermondsey, for the welfare of the Church and for the King’s prosperity.  And again in 1467, because of the fatal distemper which raged in Southwark, which he deemed to be on account of the sins of the people, the Bishop orders public processions with prayers and liturgies as a remedy and as a warning.  In St Margaret’s Church the Bishop met Jack Cade on his way into London, and by his astuteness managed to loosen the hold of Cade upon his followers, and to bring to naught the formidable outbreak.5.47

King Street, Westminster

Another purchase of Richard Danvers takes us across the river to an interesting part of old Westminster.  There, in the year 1464, he bought of Richard Werffth5.48 three tenements, two which are ‘in King’s Street before the King’s Chappel of St Stephen’s,’ and one also in Westminster which is called ‘the Kynges Hede.’  Together with these tenements in Westminster, Richard bought of Werffth lands in Pinner and Harrow.

King Street, Westminster, ran very much in the same line as the present street of the name, and was a famous thoroughfare in the days of Edward IV, the only way of access from Charing Cross to Westminster Abbey and Palace, and to the Houses of Parliament.  On the north the street began on the confines of the Palace of Whitehall, and there, near where Downing Street now is, Henry VIII added an embattled gateway.  At its south end the street terminated in a gate-house, through which it opened into the sanctuary of Westminster.  The street was crossed by a stream, which formed the northern boundary of Thorney Island.  Across this stream a bridge was thrown.  Leading eastwards from the main line of the street was an offshoot, which opened into New Palace Yard, near to where the carriage entrance now is.  Anyone passing down this portion of King Street would see a part of St Stephen’s Chapel, projecting, as it were, from the eastern side of Westminster Hall, and Richard’s purchase must have stood at or near the corner of Palace Yard, and so might be described as ‘before the King’s Chappel of St Stephen’s.’  King Street5.49 was better inhabited than built, the houses being generally after the old way, with timber and plaster, and the street somewhat narrow, ‘which causeth stoppage, for it is a very great thoroughfare.’  ‘For the accommodation of such as came to town in the terms, there stood in King Street some good inns for their reception, and not a few taverns’—one of these may have been ‘the Kynges Hede,’ which Richard Danvers bought, or it may have been a rather famous tavern of the name which stood near the present site of Marlborough House.

Purchases Culworth and Sulgrave Manors

And now we come to the purchase by Richard Danvers of the manors of Culworth and Sulgrave.  It will be remembered that when Robert Danvers died he left by will as his heir his son Henry, and that he had three daughters, of whom the two eldest were married, while the third, Joan, was a child of ten years old.  When Henry died, the three sisters became co-heiresses of his estates.  Now, the husbands, Denys and Burnaby, had their own estates, and probably none of the daughters cared for Culworth and Sulgrave where, possibly they had never lived, while the joint possession must have been an inconvenient arrangement; no doubt, therefore, they were glad to accept their uncle’s offer to buy the manors.  And so we find5.50 Richard Danvers buying of Walter Denys and his wife Agnes their share of the manors and lands which were formerly those of Robert and John Danvers, in Culworth, Sulgrave, Thorpe Mandeville, Charwelton, Grymsby, Byfield, Staverton, Aston in the Walls, in Northampton, in Pkyworth Rutland and in Alrynton Lee, Adderbury, Bourton Magna and Parva, Hardwyk, Nethrop and Bloxham in Oxon, and Dorsett in Warwick, and in Tynghurst in Berks; and at the same time buying the share in the same manors and lands of George Burnaby and his wife Alice.  It may be noticed that, in the Close Roll, Richard Dennys, who it appears from the pedigree of that family was a brother of Sir Walter’s, is joined with him in the release of the property to Richard Danvers, and that John Langston and Richard Quartermayne, with their man of business, Thomas Haltheyn, are joined with Richard in the purchase, which is, however, on behalf of the latter and his heirs.  Joan, the third daughter of Sir Robert, was not married at this time, 1472, but within the next two years she must have married Henry Frowyke, as in the year 1474 we find Henry Frowyk and his wife Joan releasing and confirming to Richard Danvers, John Langston, and John Norys, their rights in lands, etc., in Culworth, Sulgrave and other places, which were those of Robert Danvers.

Gifts John Danvers with Culworth and Sulgrave Manors

Nine years after the completion of the purchase we find, in the year 1485 (September 20, 3 Richard III), Richard Danvers5.51 enfeoffing Thomas Danvers, of Waterstock, Thomas Englefield, Thomas Langston and others of the Culworth and Sulgrave manors, and this, no doubt, with a view to making them over to his second son, John.  This he accomplished in the year 1488, when we find his feoffees in a deed dated at Culworth on the Feast of St James the Apostle (July 25), the third year of the reign of Henry VII, confirming to John Danvers and his wife Anne the manors in question.  Should John Danvers and his wife die leaving no children, the manors and lands were to pass to John’s brother Richard and his children, and failing them to the right heirs of Richard Danvers, father of John and Richard.

Death

Therefore, in his later years, Richard Danvers was seated at Prescote with large landed property in the neighbourhood, and the Patent Rolls of Edward IV and Richard III show that he was a Justice of the Peace in the counties of Oxford and Hampshire.  In the Exchequer Plea Roll of the 9 Edward IV (1469) is record of a protracted action at law between him and the Sheriff of Oxfordshire regarding a trespass which Danvers alleged the Sheriff’s officers had committed on his land at Prescote.  His will shows that he interested himself in the works of restoration of the churches in the neighbourhood, and more especially in the work going on at Cropredy Church, in aid of which he left by will 100 shillings.  He lived to see the union of the white and red roses, which was brought about in the year 1486 by the marriage of Elizabeth of York with Henry VII, and died three years after, in February, 1489.  No directions regarding his burial are given in his will, and one would have no doubt but that he was laid beside his wife in Cropredy Church were it not for a curious record which was formerly upon the wall of Bicester Church, and the mention in Richard’s will of the place in Bicester Priory where he was used to rest.  The record was a shield, which bore the Danvers (Brancestre) arms—quarterly 1 and 4 argent on a bend gules, 3 martlets or in chief crescent for difference, 2 and 3 gules, two bars argent in chief three bucks’ heads cabossed or, with an inscription above, ‘a beriall shocken’ (no doubt a burial escutcheon).5.52  If this was indeed the record of the burial of Richard Danvers in the church, and he is the only member of the family of whose connection with Bicester there is any record, why was the burial ‘shocken,’ and why should any burial be so described?

Will

A translation of Richard’s will5.53 is attached below; the original is in Latin, and is mainly occupied with bequests to various religious purposes.  The executors were his second son, John Danvers, and his son-in-law, Thomas Englefield.

Will of Richard Danvers

In the name of God, Amen.  The 27th day of January 1488 (4 Henry VII) I Richard Danvers of Prescote in Co. Oxford gent. do make my last will as follows:

I give to John Henyngham Knt. £10 because I sold to him at too high a price (nimis care) a certain weight of wax called Polyn wax.

I give to the works of the body or nave of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Mary of Lincoln 100s.

To Sir Henry Sergeantson chaplain to pray for my soul I give 20s., and to Sir Randle (Ranulpho) chaplain of the Chapel of St. Frethmund 20s. to pray for my soul.

I give 100s. to the works of the body or nave of the prebend Church of Cropredy; 20s. towards the repair of the Chapel of St. Fremund where his shrine is situated; 100s. to the works of the body or nave of the parish Church of Culworth; 20 to the work of the Church of Claydon in the parish of Cropredy; 20s. to the works of the Church of Molington; 20 to the works of the Church of Wardinton, and 20s. towards the works of the Chapel of Burton.  To the Prior and Convent of Clatcote I give 100s. to pray for my soul; to the Prior and Convent of Wroxton £10; to the Prior and Convent of Osney 20 marks; to the Prior and Convent of the House of Priory of Shene (Carthusian Order) £10 towards the repair of the said Priory, to be expended according to the discretion of Henry Tracy one of the monks there; and 5 marks towards the repair of a small place (placee) where I used to dwell within the Priory of Byrcester.

The residue of all my goods I bequeath to my Executors Thomas Englefield and John Danvers my son that they may dispose of the same for my soul and for the souls of my relations and friends and for the souls of all the faithful deceased.

Proved at Lambeth the 20th day of February of the year abovesaid.

The post-mortem inquisitions 29 and 68 of 5 Henry VII (1489) were taken in Oxfordshire and Northampton; they record that Richard Danvers died on February 14 of 4 Henry VII (1489, NS), and that on the day of his death he was seized of the manor of Prescote, which he held of the Bishop of Lincoln, and of the manors of Culworth and of Netherbury Sulgrave, which latter he held of the honor of Pynkeny, conjointly with John Langston, Thomas Englefield, Thomas Danvers and Thomas Langston, and had enfeoffed them with John Danvers his son, of those manors.  The inquisitions say that Richard’s heir was his son Richard, and that he was aged forty years and upwards at the time of his father’s death.

LANGSTON FAMILY

Richard Danvers married Elizabeth, daughter of John Langston of Caversfield, and Richard’s half-sister Amys married John Langston, Elizabeth’s brother.  The Langstons, who are not to be confused with the North Country Langtons, were seated at Caversfield in the time of Henry V, holding their lands partly of the Priory of Bicester and partly in their own right.  Browne Willis5.54 says that they bought the manor about the year 1386.  On the dissolution of the priory they received, by a grant from the Crown, the lands which they had previously held as tenants of the house.  About the year 13745.55 John Langston bought the village of Tusmere and the advowson of the church from the heirs of Sir Roger de Cotesford, and this John Langston presented to Tusmere Church in the year 1419 and again in the years 1425 and 1434.5.56 He died in the year 1435.5.57 It was probably this man’s father, another John de Langeston, who is mentioned in a Bicester deed dated in the year 1352.5.58

John Langston and Amicia Danvers

The John Langston5.59 who died in 1435 was followed by another John Langston, who presented to Tusmere Church in the years 1435, 1455, 1458, 1462, and 1487.  In the year 1471 he was Sheriff of Oxfordshire.  According to Browne Willis,5.60 he died in the year 1487,5.61 and Browne Willis thinks he married a Denton and was with her buried in the altar-tomb on the north side of the altar of Caversfield Church.  We shall, however, find reason to believe that, as regards the tomb, Willis was mistaken.  His son was the John Langston who married Amys Danvers.  Aske,5.62 who made his pedigree of the Danvers family in the year 1520, and evidently was well acquainted with its members and with their kinsmen, the Langstons, tells us that Amys, second sister to Sir Thomas Danvers, married John Langston of Caversfield, and that they had three sons and two daughters who were married and seventeen sons and daughters who died unmarried.  Richard, the eldest son, married, first, Elizabeth Illingworth, and they had a daughter, Margery, not married when Aske wrote.  Richard Langston married as his second wife Jane, daughter of Andrew Jely of Spalding, and they had a son John and a daughter Annes, both at this time unmarried.  Thomas Langston, Richard’s second brother, married Alice, daughter of Nanscylis, and they had no issue.  The third son, Christopher, married Margaret, daughter of John Hyde of Denchworth, and they had issue a son, Thomas, and a daughter Katherine.  Cloid, sister to Richard Langston, married John Boteler of Badmynton, and had issue.  Jane, sister to Cloid, married Thomas Giffard, son and heir of John Giffard, Lord of Twyford, and had issue.  Richard Langston died in the year 1525.  His port-mortem inquisitions5.63 and an indenture in the Close Roll of 1 Henry VIII5.64 confirm Aske’s account of his family.

So much for Aske’s history.  Now to return to the John Langston5.65 who married Amys Danvers.  It is clear that he had a brother Thomas, who was probably his elder brother, as it was he who presented to the Church of Tusmere (in the years 1495 and 1511).  The brothers were trustees to Richard Danvers’ estate in the year 1489.  John was Sheriff of Bucks in the year 1471, and of Oxon in 1473; his son John was Sheriff of Bucks in 1490; and Thomas, brother of the younger John, in 1496.  We do not know when Thomas died, but his brother John, as we learn from the inscription on his tomb, died September 9, 1506,5.66 and with his wife Amys, or Amicia, was buried in Caversfield Church.

Of John and Amicia’s numerous family only five or six survived them—three sons,5.67 Thomas, Richard, Christopher, and two or three daughters, Elizabeth, Joan (and Cloid?).

Thomas married Alice, widow of Thomas Saunders, and left no issue.5.68  Richard married twice—first, Elizabeth Illingworth, by whom he had a daughter, Margery; and secondly, Jane Jely, by whom he had a son, John—ten years of age at the time of his father’s death—and a daughter, Amy.  Christopher, the third son, had by his wife, Margaret Hyde, a son, Thomas—dead in the year 1524—and a daughter, Katherine,5.69 who married Thomas Piggott of Doddershall.  Richard died in the year 1525.  His post-mortem inquisition5.70 was taken at Islyppe in Oxon, June 19, 18 Henry VIII (1526).  The inquisition sets forth that his son and heir is John Langston, aged ten years and more.  The inquisition includes a portion of Richard’s will, in which he calls himself Richard Langston of London; in it he mentions his wife Joane, and to her leaves for her life his lands and tenements, excepting some of the land appertaining to the manor of Caversfield which his daughter Amy is to have for herself and her heirs.

On his wife’s death all his lands, including the manor of Buckenhall, Oxon, and its appurtenances; the manor or township of Danefeld in Bucks, and its appurtenances; lands in Bicester, Bucknell, Dunstall, Sulthorne, Langton, Fryngford, King’s Sutton, are to pass to his son John Langston, with remainder to his daughter Amy.

John, Richard’s son, married Joane, daughter of Thomas Jonson of Caversfield.5.71  He died in the year 1548, leaving no issue, and the estates passed to Thomas Moyle, who had married Amy, his sister and heiress.

Will of John Langston

Three wills of the family are on record at Somerset House, and of these the earliest is that of John Langston,5.72 made on February 16, 1499 (NS 1500), prior to the time when the law allowed a man to will his rights in landed property, and this will, therefore, arranges only for the disposal of the personal property for pious uses.  To Almighty God and the Blessed Mary he commits the care of his soul, and leaves bequests to the Cathedral Church of Lincoln and to the churches of Caversfield, Champion, Preston, Lancton, Buknell, Amersden, and to the poor of Caversfield.  He desires that he may be buried ‘in cancelle’ (in the chancel or chantry) of the Blessed St Lawrence of Caversfield, and that Masses be said in the church for his soul and for that of his wife, and for the souls of John and Elizabeth Langston (probably his father and mother) and for the souls of all the faithful.  His wife is dead.  His executor is his son Thomas, by whom the will was proved on October 15, 1506.

Monuments to John Langston and Amicia Danvers

The monumental brass of this John Langston and of his wife Amys, or Amicia, Danvers was formerly in Caversfield Church, but where exactly it was originally laid cannot now be determined.  On a gravestone were the effigies in brass of a man in armour, and of a woman on his left hand.  Above his head was a shield bearing the Langston arms, and above hers a shield bearing the arms of Langston quartering (or impaling) Brancestre for Danvers.  Beneath them the inscription:

‘O Pater excelse miserere precor miserere

 Johannis Langston et conjugis amisie

Atque sue sobolis qui te in terra coluere

 Hosse velis jungere celicolis.’

Round the verge of the stone (so Anthony Wood saw it5.73) another inscription:

‘Orate pro animabus Johannis Langston armigeri 

et Amicie consortis sue qui quidem Johannes obiit nono die Septembris Anno 

Domini MCCCCCVJ quorum animabus propitietur Deus.’

Anthony Wood does not mention the groups of children, twelve sons beneath the man and ten daughters beneath the woman’s feet, which Browne Willis notices.  Browne Willis, too, says that the woman’s shield bore Langston ‘impaling’ her arms.  As we shall presently see, there is reason to believe that the brasses in Caversfield Church, even prior to the recent restoration, had been removed from their original places, and that parts of the brasses, even in Anthony Wood’s time, may have changed places.

Will of Thomas Langston

The second of these Langston wills is that of Thomas Langston of Stowe,5.74 made on February 20, 1524, and proved June 28 of the same year.  This is the Thomas Langston, son of John Langston and Amicia Danvers, who, so Aske tells us, married Alice Nancylis and left no issue.  Thomas commits his soul to Almighty God and our Lady Saint Mary, and to all the company of heaven.  He desires that his body may be buried in Stowe Church.  He mentions his brother, Richard Langston; his sister, Joane Giffard;5.75 his cousins, Oliver and John Wellysborne and Thomas Rede; Christopher Westcott; and his cousin Katherine, daughter of his deceased brother, Christopher Langston, whose son Thomas is dead.  Katherine’s mother Margaret Rede, and her uncle William Hyde, are alive, and are to be her guardians till she is eighteen years of age, or till she marries, which must be with their consent.  To Katherine, Thomas leaves all his lands and tenements, with remainder to his cousin, John Wellysborne, and failing him to the right heirs of the testator.  The will entirely confirms Aske’s account of the family which was written in the year 1520; but in the interval between this and the will, both John Hyde of Denchworth, and Margaret Langston’s first husband, died, and Margaret married Thomas Rede.

As regards cousin John Wellysborne, we learn from Ashmole (Ashmole’s Berks)5.76 that Thomas Wellysborne married Margery, daughter of Thomas Poure of Blechingden, whose wife was Elizabeth Danvers, sister to Amicia Langston.  They had a daughter Lucy, who married Hyde of Stokelyne, Oxon, and a son, Oliver Wellysborne.  Oliver had, amongst other children, a son John, and these are the cousins Oliver and John Wellysborne of the will.  Thomas Langston was first cousin once removed to Oliver.  The name of Thomas Saunders, deceased, is mentioned more than once in the will of Thomas Langston, and Browne Willis tells us, in his History of the Hundred of Buckingham,5.77 that Thomas Saunders died in the year 1493, and that Thomas Langston married his widow.  Browne Willis also tells us5.78 that under a south window of Stowe Church was an ancient gray marble in memory of Thomas Langston and his wife; their effigies and part of the inscription in his time torn away.

Will of John Langston of Caversfield

The third will is that of John Langston of Caversfield, made August 24, 1548; proved October 28 of the same year.  This is John, the son of Richard Langston of Caversfield, nephew to Thomas of the preceding will.  He desires that he may be buried on the north side of the parish church of Caversfield, beside the high altar, before the image of St Lawrence, where he wills a tomb to be made within the wall, and his arms to be wrought in stone coloured and gilded, and ‘my herst over it to be made with barres of iron to be set fast in the wall,’ tapers upon the herst (hearse) to the number of seven, each of a pound weight of wax, and to be renewed yearly.

John Langston mentions in the will his manor-house and parsonage of Caversfield.  He mentions also his kinsman, John Langston, his godson Thomas Denton, and his sister Margaret Roger.  His wife, Jane Langston, is alive, and to her he leaves for her life all his rents and lands, and makes her his executrix, Mr Charles Pigott to be her assistant in carrying out his will.  After his wife’s decease the manor of Caversfield to pass to Thomas Pigott the younger and the heirs of his body, and after his wife’s decease the manor of Buckinghamhull and the warren to Thomas Moyle (married to John’s sister Amy) and the heirs of his body, and in default to Henry Langston his kinsman, and to Francis his son, and the township of Buckinghamhull to Thomas Langston and John his son.

This Thomas Pigott, the younger, was the son of Thomas Pigott of Doddershall and Katherine, heiress of Thomas Langston, daughter of his brother Christopher Langston.  Lipscomb5.79 is, however, wrong in making Katherine daughter of Thomas Langston as he died childless; Thomas Pigott’s mother, Katherine, was first cousin to John Langston, being daughter of Christopher, brother to John Langston’s father Richard.  We learn from an appendix5.80 to John Langston’s will that his widow, Jane, married Robert Hitchcock, who Browne Willis5.81 tells us went to law with Thomas Moyle regarding the manor of Caversfield, which Moyle recovered for his family.  We do not know the descent of the Henry Langston and his son Francis, and of the Thomas Langston and his son John, who are mentioned in the will, but believe that they were grandsons of a former Thomas Langston.

CAVERSFIELD

Village

The village of Caversfield (‘cafer,’ an enclosure) is situated about two miles north of Bicester on the road leading thence to Banbury.  About a mile to the west of the village is Bucknill, which was for a time the property of the Langstons.  Caversfield, though surrounded by Oxfordshire, is an outlying parish of Buckinghamshire.  Bishop Kennett, in his Parochial Antiquities, derives the name of the place from Carausiusfeld, shortened and altered to Caversfield.  Carausius was a British hero, with, however, a somewhat mythical history.  It is said that he was a man well beloved of the Britons, by whose help he achieved many feats of arms in the reigns of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian (circa A.D. 294).  He was appointed Admiral of the Fleet in the British Seas with a view to repressing the incursions of pirates, and his success in arms tempted him to aspire to the government of Britain.  He was opposed and slain in battle by Allectus, who took the title of Emperor, and was in his turn defeated and slain by Constantius Chlorus.  The battle between Carausius and Allectus was fought in a field which formed a part of the Langston estate, and the camp of Carausius, so says the local history, still appears in the plain upon Bayard’s Green, about a mile from Caversfield Church.  In the year 1620 a pot full of brass coins many of them having the impress of Carausius and others of Allectus, was found at Steeple-Claydon, about eight miles from Caversfield.

Church

The Church of Caversfield, very ancient even in the days of John Langston and Amys Danvers, is situated near the road in what was once a square enclosure surrounded by a raised bank of earth and a ditch.  Apparently this enclosure was an ancient burial-place during the rule of Rome in Britain, and many graves of that period have been discovered within it.  It is probably this enclosure which gave the name to the village.5.82 The church, dedicated to St Lawrence, is a small one of mixed styles, consisting of chancel, nave, north and south aisles, and western tower.  The basement story of the tower is of the Saxon period.  On the north and south are small round-headed windows widely splayed within and without in walls of great thickness.  Such windows in the Saxon tower of St Mary’s, Guildford, have been shortened by the introduction of semicircular early Norman arches.

It would seem that the church had originally, as now, north and south aisles, but the aisles were long since removed, and the church at the time of the restoration, in the years 1873-74, consisted only of chancel, nave, and tower.  At that time the present aisles were added.  The beautiful doorway of Norman work which now gives entrance to the north aisle formerly stood near to or on its present site, but it is uncertain whether it gave entrance to a porch or directly to the nave.  The fine Norman font, enriched by an intersecting arcade of early work, stands near the present entrance to the north aisle, and in it doubtless were baptized the two and twenty children of John and Amys Langston.  There is in the chancel a piscina of the same age as the font.

The church and the monuments to the Langston family have been described by Anthony Wood,5.83 by Browne Willis in his History of the Hundred of Buckingham (circa 1755), and by Lipscomb5.84 (circa 1847) in his history of the county.  The brasses are also described by Haines (Monumental Brasses) as he found them in the year 1858.

Besides the Langston brass, already described, to the memory of John Langston and his wife Amicia, there was on an ancient gravestone the portraiture in brass of a man, dressed apparently in priest’s habit, at his mouth a scroll inscribed:

‘Subveniat mihi Laurentii passio sancti;’

over this St Lawrence with his gridiron; at two corners of the stone the arms of Langston, and round the verge:

‘Obiit die St. Blasii an. dni. MCCCCXXXV cujus aie propitietur Deus. Amen.’

On another ancient slab was shield bearing two bars, in fess point a mullet (for difference), in chief three estoils, impaling or a cross moline.  Above, on a brass plate, two hands holding a heart inscribed ‘credo,’ and on three labels issuing therefrom:

‘Hen mihi Deus, quia peccavi nimis in vitâ meâ, Quid faciam miser? ubi 

resurgam nisi ad to Deus meus? Miserere mei dum veneris in novissimo die.’

Willis says this is a memorial to Thomas Denton, who in his will, dated December 27, 1533, appointed to be buried in Caversfield Church.

Besides the above, Lipscomb saw a sepulchral slab on the floor of the church, almost covered by a pew, showing only a part of the two small plates on which were the representation of the feet of many children.  Also he saw two well-preserved figures of a man and woman on brass plates lying detached on the floor.  When Haines visited the church in 1858, some ten years after Lipscomb’s visit, parts of some of the brasses were loose in a chest, and of these some were stolen prior to the restoration of the church in the year 1873-74.

Of the original brasses there now remain in the church the brass to Thomas Denton, but minus the inscription, upon the floor of the nave just outside the chancel.  On the wall of the north aisle the figures of a civilian and a woman.  Above his head is a shield bearing the Langston arms, and above hers a shield with Langston quartering Danvers (Brancestre).  Beneath his feet is a group of twelve boys and beneath hers a group of ten girls.  With these is a small portion of the inscription beginning ‘Orate pro’, which formerly ran round the verge of John and Amicia’s tomb.  The woman is clearly the one figured in Lipscomb’s engraving—Amicia Langston; the man—a civilian—belongs to another tomb, and is probably one of the figures which Lipscomb saw lying detached upon the floor.  The inscription beginning ‘O Pater excelse,’ which Wood, Willis, and Lipscomb agree in stating belonged to the brass of John Langston and his wife, Amicia, has been placed above the altar-tomb on the north side of the altar, where, clearly, it is out of place.  It should be restored to its former position beneath the feet of Amicia Langston.

On the north side of the altar, in an arched recess in the north wall of the chancel, is a raised stone tomb, the south side and ends of which are panelled and richly decorated, bearing the shield of Langston (or a chevron between two roses gules in chief, and in base a dolphin embowed azure), and of Denton5.85 of Ambrosden (argent a mullet between two bars gules, in chief three estoils (cinquefoils?) sable).  These arms are impaled with those of Langston at each end of the tomb.  Round the verge ran an inscription, which Willis states had been torn away when he visited the church.  He expresses an opinion that the tomb is that of John Langston, who died in the year 1487, and that his wife must have been one of the Dentons of Ambrosden.  But Browne Willis was clearly unacquainted with the will of John Langston, who died in 1548, and gives, as we have been, in his will very precise directions for the erection of a tomb within the wall on the north side of the church beside the high altar.  The Denton match is not discoverable in the existing pedigrees of either family; the shields upon the tomb testify to it, but not as to the period of its occurrence.

CROPREDY

Richard Danvers and Elizabeth Langston

Elizabeth Danvers, wife of the elder Richard of Prescote, was buried in Cropredy Church, and a manuscript now in the Bodleian Library5.86 records that there was formerly in the church a brass plate under the figure of a lady praying, the arms lost, on which was inscribed:

‘Hic jacet Elizabeth quondam uxor Ricardi Danvers armigeri Dni de Prescote qui obiit die mensis Februarii Ao Domni MCCCCCLXXXJ. cujus animæ . . .’

Richard Danvers was probably buried near his wife in Cropredy Church at the east end of the south aisle in the Prescote (Danvers) Chapel, near to the place where John, the last of the Danvers of Prescote, was buried in the year 1720.

History

Prescote has been from a very early period a lordship of the territory, or barony, of Cropredy, which included Cropredy itself, together with Great and Little Bourton, Wardington, Williamscote, Millington, and Claydon with Clattercote.  The village is situated on an eminence above the Charwell, and probably takes its name from ‘crop’ (Saxon), an eminence, and ‘rhydde’ a ford.5.87 In the Domesday Book the name is written Cropelie, and in later times we have it Cropperia, Croperdy, Croprich, Croprydy.  The lordship of Prescote was formerly held of the Bishop of Lincoln by the Vipont (de vetere ponte) family (see Chapter Three).  In the year 1350 Roger de Cottesford, chevalier, and Katherine, his wife, bought the manor and that of Little Haseley of Sir John Trimonel,5.88 and in the year 1361 it continued in their hands.  From the year 1396 to 1417 the manor belonged to Sir Thomas Cottesford and his wife Alice.  Sir Thomas, with Robert Trymonel, alienated Prescote in the year 1419 to John Danvers5.89 of Calthorpe.

Cropredy Bridge

Prescote, a substantial red brick house, stands on slightly rising ground within the angle made by the confluence of the Charwell coming from the east, with an affluent (the Bradmere?), which joins it from the north.  The stream thus formed takes a southerly direction, and is shortly crossed by Cropredy Bridge, famous as the scene of the defeat in 1644 of the Parliamentary army under Waller by the Royalist forces.  Not far distant from the bridge are the heights of Bourton and the village which was long a possession of the Danvers family.  Thence Waller with his army swooped down upon the divided army of the King, and to it, after the defeat of his forces, he retired.  Close to the bridge, on the Bourton road, is the site of the manor-house of Cropreri (Cropredy), the dwelling-place of the family whose name is so often associated in the early rolls with that of Danvers.5.90  The house of the de Croperis has gone, and its site is occupied by a farmhouse which is still surrounded by the ancient moat.  Close, too, to the head of the bridge, on an eminence which commands it, is the village of Cropredy, dominated by its fine and well-preserved church.  In the churchyard is more than one grave of ‘the faithful soldiers of the King’ who were killed in the battle.

Prescote Manor-House

Three of four hundred yards north of the bridge is Prescote House, standing amongst frequently flooded low grounds.  It is quite possible that the slight eminence on which the house now stands was once an island, and as such may have been a place of refuge during the many invasions of the Danes to which this part of the country was subjected.  Possibly it has its name Prescote, or priest’s house, from its having been an asylum for the religious of the neighbourhood during those perilous times.  Of the old manor-house nothing, excepting a portion of the moat, is outwardly visible.  It is, however, clear that John Danvers, the last of the name who owned Prescote, when he rebuilt the house in the year 1691, did not entirely destroy the old building, but incorporated portions of it in the present fabric.  The entrance hall, panelled with cedar, and the old oak staircase, are of a much earlier period than his time, while the massive walls which the house includes may well have belonged to the manor-house of the first John Danvers of Prescote.

Walter Gostelow and his father, Richard, lived at Prescote House,5.91 and the former was born there in the year 1600.  Writing in 1655, he says the house had within his memory ‘groves and good walks about it—some religious house I conceive it to have been.  An altar and chappel I have known in it.’

Church

Cropredy Church (St Mary) is a fine fourteenth-century church, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, north and south aisles, western tower, south porch, and vestry with a priest’s room above it on the north side of the chancel.

Probably the present church was built on the foundations of an older church (circa 1200), of which the east wall of the nave remains.  While this church was standing the eastern part of the south aisle was constructed to form a chantry for the burial of some important person, or not improbably to contain the shrine of St Fremund, whose remains were about the year 1206 transferred to the church of Dunstaple Priory.  Within the chantry two arched recesses were inserted in its south wall, and in one of them was placed the effigy, of which a mutilated portion remains, supposed to be that of Sir Simon de Croperi.  About the year 1320 the chancel was rebuilt, and this is the period of the beautiful piscina, sedilia, and recess in the north wall, which was probably constructed to serve as an Easter sepulchre.  Afterwards the remainder of the church seems to have been rebuilt piece by piece, commencing, probably, about the middle of the fourteenth century, with the south aisle and its extension to form a chantry to the south of the chancel.  Towards the end of the century the nave, with its clerestory and the present fine chancel arch, were built.  The north aisle is later, of Perpendicular work, and was subsequently prolonged to form a chantry on the north side of the chancel.  It is probable that the last portion of the work was carried out in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and that at the same time the south chantry was partially rebuilt, for it will be remembered that Richard Danvers in his will, made in 1488, leaves 100s., to the works of the body, or nave, of the prebendal church of Cropredy, and 20s. towards the repair of the chapel of St Fremund.  At this time, too, or perhaps a little later, the wooden screen was erected which still divides the Prescote, or Danvers, chapel from the rest of the south aisle.  In the moulding over the panelling on either side of the door of the screen are the letters A.D. (Ann Danvers?), with stops of roses and pateræ of lily leaf.  The rood screen, judging from its remains, must have been exceptionally fine, but in recent times it was cut down, and converted into the screen which now divides the chancel from the north chapel.  Sad havoc was made of the church at the time that it was ‘pewed’ in the seventeenth century.  Happily all the eighteenth and seventeenth century ‘improvements’ have been cleared away during the incumbency of the present vicar,5.92 and all that is possible has been done to repair the mischief of modern restorers; the church is now an impressive and interesting example of Decorated and Perpendicular work.

The history of Sir John Danvers, afterwards of Dauntsey, the second son of Richard Danvers, begins a new chapter in the history of the family, and must, therefore, be deferred; but it will be well to continue here the history of Richard, his elder brother, and that of his sisters, Margery and Anne.

FAMILY OF RICHARD DANVERS AND ELIZABETH LANGSTON

Richard Danvers and Elizabeth Preston

Richard Danvers, the younger, was born about the year 1445, and married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Preston.  By her he had only one child, Anna, of whom we have been able to learn nothing further than that she was seventeen years of age at the time of her father’s death in the year 1504.  Richard Preston became imbecile in his old age,5.93 and a grant was made in 1486 to Richard Danvers, the younger, husband of Elizabeth, daughter and heir-apparent of Richard Preston, that he may look after the safety of the said Preston, and have regard to the application of his estate to the maintenance of Elizabeth, while Thomas Englefield is to have custody of Richard Preston, an idiot, and of his property.

Richard Danvers the younger died in 1505, and a translation of his post-mortem inquisition is appended, both because the original is a good example of such a document, and because it shows the descent of the manor of Prescote through three generations of the family.

Oxon. —Chancery Inq. P.M. 20 Hen. VII., No. 134.

Inquisition taken at Burford on the 16th day of January 20 Hen. VII. (1505) before John Bleke Escheator, after the death of Richard Danvers Esq. by the oath of Thomas Pynnok &c. &c.  Who say that the said Richard held neither lands nor tenements of the King either in demesne, reversion or service at the time of his death.

One John Danvers Esq. deceased was seized of the manor of Prescote in his demesne as of fee, and so seized by his charter (shown to the Jurors in evidence) he gave to Richard Danvers Esq. his son, also deceased, the manor aforesaid: to hold to him and his heirs male, with remainder to the right heirs of the said John.  By virtue whereof the said Richard was thereof seized as of fee-tail, and had issue the said Richard now lately deceased and John Danvers Knt., and died thereof seized.  After whose death the manor aforesaid descended to the said Richard as his son and heir, who died thereof seized without heirs male.

After his death the manor aforesaid descended to the said John Danvers Knt. as the brother of the said Richard (the son) and as the heir male of the said Richard (the father), who was and still is thereof seised in his demesne as of fee-tail.

The said manor is held of William Bishop of Lincoln in right of his Bishopric, as of his Castle or manor of Banbury by the service of one knight’s fee, and is worth per ann. clear £26 13s. 4d.

At the time of the death of the said Richard (the father) he and John Langston Esq. were seised of 7 messuages, 12 virgates of land, and 30s. of rent with appu’rts. in Bourton Magna, Bourton Parva, Banbury, Wardington and Adderbury in Co. Oxon, to them and to the heirs and assigns of the said Richard, and the said Richard died thereof seised.  After his death the reversion of the premises descended to the aforesaid Richard (the son) as his son and heir, who died seised of the said reversion.  The said John Langston continued in the premises and is still thereof seised.

Anna daughter of the said Richard (the son) is his next heir, and is aged 17 years and more.

The lands and tenements in Burton Parva and Wardington are held of John . . . by the service of one knight’s fee, and are worth per ann. clear £3.  The said lands and tenements in Bourton Magna and Banbury are held of William Bishop of Lincoln, by the 4th part of a knight’s fee, and are worth per ann. clear £4.  The lands and tenements in Adderbury are held of the Abbot of Chester by fealty only, and are worth per ann. clear 26s. 8d.

Richard Danvers (the son) died 27 December last past.

Margery Danvers and Sir Thomas Englefield

Margery, Richard’s eldest daughter (born 1466), married, in 1487,5.94 Sir Thomas Englefield of the old Berkshire family of that name, and of Wootton-Basset in Wiltshire.5.95 The family took their name from the town of Englefield, where they were settled two hundred years and more before the Conquest.  Sir Nicholas of Rycot, an earlier member of the family, married as his second wife Elizabeth Quatermain, sister to Maude who married John Bruley.  Sir Thomas, Margery’s husband, was Speaker to the House of Commons in the year 1496, and was knighted on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Arthur with Katherine of Aragon.  He was Justiciar of the City of Chester and was again Speaker in the first Parliament of Henry VIII.  He died in or about 1512, and was buried in Englefield Church, where his monument still remains.  Out of his mouth proceeded this scroll:

‘O bone Jesu tu novisti et potes, et vis bonum 

animabus nostris; nos nec novimus nec possumus’;

and out of his wife’s is a like scroll:

‘Tu, pro pietate tua ineffabili nobiscum dispones 

secundum quod noveris tibi velle et nobis prodesse.’

Ashmole, in 1665, copied what remained of the epitaph.  It was as follows:

‘Here lyeth sure Thomas Englefilde and Margery his wyffe, the 

whych sure .  .  .  . [this]  the 3rd day of April, the yere of our .  .  .  . 

[Lord] v and xiii on whos soules Jhesu have .  .  .  .  . [taken]’

Thomas and Margery left two sons and four daughters.  The eldest Richard, died without issue; the second, Thomas, has a long line of descendants.

Elizabeth Danvers and William Dale

Elizabeth, the second daughter of Richard Danvers, married William Dale of Tickencote, Rutland.  At a very early period the manor of Tickencote rested in the family of Daneys, or Dacus.  In the time of Henry II they held it of the Grimbalds, a powerful family in those days.  Sir Robert Daneys, who died without issue in 13 Henry VI (1434), left as his heirs his sister Jane, aged 22, wife of Thomas Dale, and her sister Elizabeth.  The Dales obtained the whole of the manor of Tickencote.  Thomas, son of the above, died 20 Edward IV (1480), leaving as his heir his son William, aged 8 years.  William was lord of the manor of Tickencote, but lived at Tidmarsh in Berkshire.  He married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Danvers, and left three daughters, who married, and became Anne Fetiplace, Elizabeth Lynne, and Johanna Wollescott.5.96

JOHN DANVERS of Swithland

The third son of John Danvers and Alice Verney was another John Danvers, and we believe that this John married Margaret Walcote of Swithland, and is the ancestor of the Danvers of Swithland.  The following considerations support this view:

1. The assumed descent of John Danvers, who married Margaret Walcote, from Stephen Danvers of Frolesworth, as given by Nichols and others, is moreover, traced to Stephen’s second son, Henry, who was a cleric, and for many years Rector of Frolesworth.  But it is probable that the family of Stephen, in the male line, terminated with his grandson, Nicholas, whose daughter and heiress, Joan, ‘heir general of the family,’ married John Aumari.

2. The Visitation of Leicester of 1619, and Phillpotts’ Leicester and Warwick,5.97 say that John Danvers, husband of Margaret Walcote, was brother to Sir Robert Danvers the Judge, who, we know, was the son of John Danvers of Calthorpe by his first wife.

3. The arms of the Danvers of Swithland, as given in the Leicester Visitations of 1563 and 1619, are those of John Danvers of Calthorpe and his first wife, Alice Verney, and those arms can only have come to the Danvers of Swithland through John’s son John.  Not earlier, the dates forbid that; not later, for the pedigree of the Danvers of Swithland after the time of John and Margaret is authentic and complete, and nowhere admits the introduction of those arms.

In Holy Orders

There was another John Danvers, who was in Holy Orders, and, as Aske tells us,5.98 was a Doctor of both laws.5.99 From the Lincoln Registers we learn that in the year 1431 John Danuers was presented by Thomas Baldington (dom. de Aldebury, his brother-in-law) to the church of Aldebury c. cantaria Merston Trussell.5.100

In the year 1472 John released to his brother, Richard Danvers, any rights he might have in the manors which formerly belonged to his brother Robert.5.101

One of the Harleian MSS. states that John Danvers was a prebend of St Paul’s Cathedral, but his name does not appear in any authentic list of the prebends; yet that he was in some way associated with the cathedral seems probable from the fact of his having been connected by the marriage of his sister with the brother of the then Dean of St Paul’s, William Say, and from the curious instructions which in his will he leaves with reference to his burial in St Paul’s Churchyard.  He is the ‘Uncle Doctor Danvers’ to whom in 1482 Dame Margaret Lyneham bequeathed her ‘grete playne salt.’

Will

Dr Danvers died in the year 1504.  His will is as follows:

Will of Master John Danvers

(27 Holgrave.)

In the name of God, Amen.  The 8th day of February 1504, 20 Hen. 7.  I Master John Danvers Clerk do make my will in manner following.

I give my body to be buried in the parish Churchyard of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul’s in London in such place as by my Executrice shall be thought most convenient.  ‘And I will that my said Executrice in all goodly haste after that my body be ther buried provide and ordeyne a stone of Marbill to be laide over my sepultur or grave with an ymage representing my persone dedely.’

I bequeath to Margaret the wife of Michell ffisher gent. late the daughter of Sir Henry Frowyk Knt. £5.

The residue of my goods, chattels and debts, after my debts and the costs of my funeral are paid and this my will in all things fulfilled, I give to Cristiana Tewkysbury of London, widow, whom I ordain my only Executrice.

Witnesses: Master Thomas Stokes, John Checherly, tailor, William Marsham, salter, citizens of London, John Russhell and Richard Baas notaries.

Proved at Lambeth the 18th day of February 1504.

The Margaret Fisher mentioned in the will was great-niece to John Danvers, being daughter of Joan Frowyke, daughter to John’s brother, Sir Robert Danvers.

Summary

Therefore we suspect that John Danvers of Calthorpe had, by his first wife, Alice Verney, a son John, who married Margaret Walcote of Walcote, heiress of Sir John Walcote of Swithland, and became the ancestor of the Danvers of Swithland.  This John Danvers was dead in 1424, when his widow was married to her second husband, Thomas Asheton.

Further, we assume that John Danvers of Calthorpe had, by his second wife, Joan Bruley, another son of same name, (possibly born after the death of his half-brother John of Swithland) and this is the John Danvers, the cleric, who died in 1504.

AGNES DANVERS

Agnes, the only daughter of John Danvers and Alice Verney, was four times married—first, to Thomas Baldington; second, to Sir John Fray; third, to Lord Wenlock; fourth, to Sir John Say.

Thomas Baldington

Her first husband was Thomas Baldington of Baldington Manor, and of Aldebury, son of William, son of John Baldington.  His family was allied to that of Danvers by the marriage of his sister Agnes to Thomas Denton, of Caversfield.  Thomas Baldington died on August 22, 1436.5.102 His inquisition, taken at Thame, in Oxfordshire, states that his wife, Agnes, was still alive, and that his heirs were his daughters—Agnes, aged eight years; Alice, aged one year; and Isabel, aged one month.  We hear nothing more of Isabel.  Agnes, the eldest, is said to have married five times.  Her first husband was William Browne,5.103 of Halton,5.104 by whom she had two children, Robert and Constance, who are mentioned in her mother’s will.  Her second (third?) husband was Sir Geoffrey Gate,5.105 whose widow she was when her mother made her will in the year 1478.  Sir Geoffrey died in 1477, Agnes in 1487.  She remarried William Bramlac.  Alice, her sister, married Henry Tracey, of the ancient Gloucestershire family of that name, and, as appears from Oxon Fine 116 of 32 Henry VI (1453), was also married to a John Wakehurst.  In Lipscomb’s Bucks.,5.106 she is called ‘heiress of the Baldingtons, and heir general of the Arundels.’  Her eldest son, Sir William Tracey, was sheriff of Gloucester in the year 1512, and is memorable as having been one of the earliest of the men of consequence in the country to embrace the reformed religion.5.107

Sir John Fray

Agnes Baldington’s second husband was Sir John Fray, a lawyer, and a celebrity in his day.  A Hertfordshire man, he represented the county in the Parliaments of September 28, 1419, and in that of November 1420.  In the latter sat with him his future father-in-law, John Danvers, than whom he cannot have been many years the junior.  In the year 1423-24 he was Recorder of London, and in the following year was raised to the Bench as Baron of the Exchequer, and in 1435 became Chief Baron, and presided in the court for twelve years.  He died in the year 1461,5.108 and was buried in the church of St Bartholomew the Less in Smithfield.  His heirs, as we learn from his inquisition,5.109 were his four daughters—Elizabeth Waldegrave, aged 20; Margaret, wife of John Lynham,5.110 aged 19; Agnes, aged 18; and Katherine, aged 14.  Thus, Agnes Fray had living two daughters with the same Christian names, and this was one of the sources of the confusion we shall presently notice regarding her marriages.

Sir John Wenlock

Not long after Sir John’s death, Agnes Fray took as her third husband Sir John Wenlock, a widower.5.111 Sir John’s first wife was Elizabeth (daughter to Sir John Drayton, of Kempston, Beds), to whose memory he raised the beautiful chapel in Luton Church which bears his name.  No memorial to her now remains in the chapel, but the following inscription had formerly a place in one of the windows:

‘Jesu Christ, most of myght
Have mercy on John le Wenlok, knight,
And on his wyffe Elizabeth
Woh out of this world is passed by death;
Woh founded this chapel here.
Helpe them with yr hartey prayer;
That they may come to that place
Where ever is joy and solace.’

Sir John Wenlock held many offices in the reign of Henry VI.  Amongst others, he was Constable of Bamburgh Castle, Chamberlain to Queen Margaret, and was employed abroad on important missions.  In May, 1455, he fought at St Albans, on the side of the King, in the first of the battles of the Wars of the Roses—a battle in which, chiefly owing to the leadership of the Earl of Warwick, the Lancastrians were defeated with great slaughter.  Amongst the slain were the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland and Lord Clifford, while many of the other leaders, amongst them Wenlock, were wounded.  The King himself was wounded, and was captured and carried to London.  After this battle, Wenlock made his peace with the Yorkists, and in the July following we find him elected as Speaker of the Parliament which assembled that month at Westminster.  At the battle of Towton he fought on the side of the Yorkists, and for his gallantry was raised to the dignity of a Baron—he had already been made a Knight of the Garter.  Ten year later, and Wenlock had again changed sides; and at the final battle of the War of the Roses, the battle of Tewkesbury, was one of the leaders, under the Duke of Somerset, of the Queen’s army.  There Wenlock died—slain, as it is said, by the Duke, who, taking his inaction for treachery, in his fury clove Wenlock’s head with his battle-axe.  Thus Agnes Wenlock, for the third time, was a widow.

The pedigree of Lord Wenlock is as follows: Wenlock had a son William, a priest, a canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, who is buried in the fine tomb in the Wenlock chapel of Luton Church.  The sister of William the priest, Joanna, married Nicholas Wynell, or Wyvell, and their son, William Wynell, alias Wenlock, had a son John, Lord Wenlock, who was husband of Agnes Danvers.  The heir of Lord Wenlock was Thomas Lawley, descended from Agnes Lawley, daughter of Thomas Wynell, brother of the Nicholas Wynell who married Joanna Wenlock.  From Thomas Lawley the present Lord Wenlock proves his descent.  The will of William Wenelok is registered at Somerset House, Rous 6, and is interesting from the number of his friends whom the testator mentions.  He desires that he may be buried in the church of Luton, Bedfordshire.5.112 

Sir John Say

Her fourth husband was Sir John Say, a man of considerable note in his day.  Sir John is commonly called in the records of the period ‘of London.’  His brother William, who was a scholar of Winchester College from 1425 to 1428, and became a Fellow of New College, Oxford, is described in the college register as ‘of Aldgate.’  He was not Founder’s kin.  According to the Visitation of Middlesex,5.113 Sir John was a son of William Say.  His mother’s name is not stated.  In the Hustings Roll of the City of London, of the years 1426 and 1443, appears the name of Ralph Say, grocer; in the year 1441, that of William Say, clerk; in the years 1455 and 1459 John Say, Esq.; and in the year 1470, Sir John Say, Knight.  We have not been able to learn any thing further regarding Sir John’s ancestry, but his father appears to have been a man of good position, and armigerous.  This we infer from the fact that a descendant of Sir John’s brother Hugh5.114 had the same coat of arms as Sir John, which, therefore, had descended to them from a common ancestor.

Sir John Say5.115 was member for the borough of Cambridge in the Parliament of February 1446-47, and for the county in January 1441-49.  He was member for Hertfordshire in the Parliament of January 1455, and for the same county, and Speaker, in May 1467, and December 1477.  For a time he was sub-Treasurer of England.

Sir John was a strenuous supporter of the Lancastrian party, and played a conspicuous part in the events which, in 1470, restored Henry VI for a brief period to the throne; but he appears to have finally joined t he Yorkists, and on his tomb in Broxbourne Church wears the collar of suns and roses proper to that party.

About the year 14505.116 Sir John Say married Elizabeth, daughter of Lawrence Cheney, Esq., of Fen Ditton, Cambridgeshire, widow of Frederick Tilney, Esq., and mother to Elizabeth, wife of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk (the Earl of Surrey, who commanded at Flodden Field).  By his first wife Sir John had several children.  She died in the year 1473, and was buried in Broxbourne Church,5.117 in the tomb which she had prepared during her lifetime for herself and for her husband.  The inscription on the tomb is as follows:

‘Here lyeth Dame Elizabeth, sometyme wyfe to Sir John Say, Knt., daughter
of Laurence Cheney, Esq., of Cambridgshire, a woman of noble blode
and most noble in gode manners, which decessed the xxv day of September the
year of our Lord 1473, and enterred in the church of Brokesburne abydynge
the body of her said husband, whose souls God bryng to everlasting life.’

Sir John Say’s second wife was Agnes Danvers, then for the third time a widow.  Both the bride and bridegroom must have been of mature age when they married.  They had no children.

Sir John died on April 12, 1478, leaving very large landed property in Essex, Hertfordshire, and Cambridgeshire.5.118  His heir was his son, William Say, aged 26 and more at the time of his father’s death.  In the year 14645.119 Sir John bought the manor of ‘Sabrysford, alias Sabrysworth,’ in Hertfordshire, from David Malpas and his wife Agnes.  This manor was the ancient possession of the de Say family, and the fact of Sir John holding it,5.120 together with the similarity of his name to that of its former lords, appears to have given rise to the idea that he was descended from the ‘de Says.’  Of this, however, there is no evidence, and his coat of arms, as displayed upon his tomb, is not that of the de Says, and was never borne by them.  The arms are ‘per pale azure and gules, three chevronels argent, each charged with another humett, countercharged of the field.’

Sir John was buried in Broxbourne Church in the tomb which his first wife had prepared.  Their monument is placed beneath the arch which separates the chancel from the south aisle of the church.  There, on a raised tomb of Purbeck marble, are the effigies in brass of Sir John Say, Knt., in a complete suit of armour, and his wife Elizabeth in a rich dress, emblazoned with the arms of Cheyney.  Above Sir John are his arms, as already given.

Sir John’s heir was his eldest son, Sir William Say, who also lies buried in Broxbourne Church.  He married Elizabeth, widow of Sir Thomas Waldegrave (the daughter of his stepmother Agnes by her second husband, Sir John Fray).  By her first husband Elizabeth had children, from one of whom the present noble family of Waldegrave is descended.

Sir John Say had four brothers, one of whom, Hugh, married the heiress of Robert Colebrook, and had a son David, from whom, in the fourth generation, was descended Robert Say of Ickenham,5.121 Middlesex, who, as we have mentioned, bore the same arms as did Sir John.

Another brother of Sir John’s was William, who became Dean of St Paul’s of London.  He was educated at Winchester College, where he entered as a scholar in the year 1425.5.122 He was Dean of St Paul’s from November 1457, till his death on November 23, 2468.  He was also of the King’s Privy Council, and was Prolocutor of the Synod held at London in 1463.  Dean Say was a considerable benefactor to Winchester College in the way of church plate and vestments, and most likely gave money as well to be expended in the purchase of land.  It would appear that he was the personal friend of Bishop Waynflete, for we find him5.123 asked to meet Waynflete at breakfast at the college in the year 1443, and in the year 1447, after the election of Waynflete to the See of Winchester, Monsieur William Say and other gentlemen are invited to dinner to meet the Bishop-elect.

Dean Say was buried in the church of St Faith, in the crypt beneath the choir of St Paul’s5.124 and after his death a chantry was under his will founded for a priest to perform Divine service in the chapel in which he was buried for the soul of the said William, as also for the good estate of Sir William Say, Knt., and of Henry, Earl of Essex, and Mary his wife, and of William Blount, 4th Lord Mountjoy, and Elizabeth, his wife, during this lives in this world, and for their souls after their departure hence, and for the souls of Sir John Say, Knt. and Elizabeth his wife, father and mother of the said Sir William, as also for Thomas, Leonard, Anne, Elizabeth, Katherine, and Mary, children of the said Sir John and Elizabeth, and for the soul of Robert Shirborne,5.125 then Dean of the Cathedral, and the souls of the faithful deceased, and for keeping the anniversary of the said William Say on November 23 for ever.5.126

Descent of Sir John Say

Clutterbuck’s account of the parentage of Sir John Say is as follows: The manor of Sabrysworth (Sawbridgeworth) was carried to John de Fallesley by his marriage with Elizabeth, heiress of the De Saye family,5.127 and after his death, by his wife’s second marriage to Sir William Heron, of the ancient family of that name.  Sir William, in right of his wife, became lord of Sabrysworth and Baron Say, titles which he continued to bear after her death.  Sir William married as his second wife Elizabeth, widow of ..... Norbury, sister to Ralph Botteler, but by neither wife had he children.  On his death (October 30, 6 Henry IV, 1404) his brother, John Heron, became his heir, and had a son, Sir John Heron of Sabrysworth, who died in 1420, leaving as his son and heir another John Heron.  This John died in 14685.128 leaving, according to Clutterbuck, a son, another John, whom he calls John Say, and states that he married, first, Elizabeth Cheyney, and secondly, Agnes Danvers.  But Clutterbuck gives no reason for the change of name from Heron to Say, and, moreover, we find, on referring to the post-mortem inquisition of the John Heron and his wife Agnes, who died in 8 Edward IV, that the jurors state they did not know who were his heirs, which they surely would have known had the succession been as stated by Clutterbuck.  Further, Sir Richard Heron, in his history of the family,5.129 though he knows very well the Herons of Sabrysworth, makes no mention of Sir John Say or of anyone corresponding to him.

Death

Dame Agnes Say died in June of the year 1478, and was, as she directs in her will,5.130 buried near her second husband, Sir John Fray, in the church of St Bartholomew-the-Less in Smithfield.  Her post-mortem inquisition was taken November 5, 1478.5.131 Her daughters are Agnes, formerly wife of Sir Geoffrey Gate, aged 40 and more; Margaret, wife of John Lynham, aged 36; Alice, wife of Henry Tracy, aged 32 years and more; Elizabeth, formerly wife of Thomas Waldegrave, aged 30 years and more; Katherine, wife of Humphrey Stafford, aged 26 and more.

Agnes, wife of Sir Geoffrey Gate, was eight years of age when her father, Thomas Baldington, died in the year 1435, and was, therefore, 51 when her mother died in the year 1478; while her sister, Alice Tracy, who in her mother’s inquisition comes in between two of the Fray daughters, was a year old when her father died in 1435, and was, therefore, 44 when her mother died—not 32, as she herself, or the jurors, represent her.  Margaret Lynham was 19 at the time of her father, Sir John Fray’s, death in 1461, and her age is, therefore, correctly stated in her mother’s inquisition; but Elizabeth Waldegrave was a year older than her sister Margaret, and her age, therefore, was 37—not 30—and Katherine Stafford’s age was 31—not 26.  We shall return presently to these ladies and their misrepresented ages.

Will

The will of Dame Agnes Say was proved on July 16, 1478.  She leaves money for a priest to sing for the souls of my Lord Wenlock, Sir John Fraye, and Sir John Say, ‘myn husbands,’ the trental of St Gregory in a place to be assigned to him by Dame Margaret Lynham, ‘her fonde daughter.’  She mentions her daughter, Dame Agnes Gate, widow, mother of Constance Dye, ‘her daughter’s daughter.’  She also mentions Robert Browne (son of Dame Annys by a previous husband), to whom certain lands were to pass on the death of Dame Annys Gate.  She also leaves a legacy to her daughter, Alice Tracy, and mentions her brothers, Thomas, William, and Richard Danvers.  Her executors were Elizabeth Waldegrave, Henry Danvers, and John Clopton.

Owing to the fact that in her will Dame Agnes mentions but three of her husbands, and owing, too, perhaps, to the confusion resulting from the misrepresentation of her daughters’ ages, three or four of the genealogists of the family have been led to assume the existence of two daughters of John Danvers, both named Agnes, or Annys, of whom the elder, the daughter of Alice Verney, married Thomas Baldington, while the younger, a daughter of Joan Bruley, married Sir John Fray, Lord Wenlock, and Sir John Say.  But it is quite evident from the will and post-mortem inquisition of Dame Agnes Say that she was the mother of Dame Agnes Gate and of Alice Tracy, and the widow, therefore, of Thomas Baldington.5.132

Windows in Long Melford Church

In Long Melford Church, Suffolk, is a very interesting memorial of Dame Agnes and of two of her daughters, Margaret Lynham and Elizabeth Waldegrave, and it was placed there by an old friend, Sir John Clopton, not improbably an admirer of the fascinating Agnes.  Fascinating we presume she was, for though it does not appear that she was a lady specially well endowed in lands and money, she won four husbands, all men of good position, and three of them men distinguished in the State.  And we incline to think that Sir John Clopton desired to leave such a record of her, for from the window of Long Melford Church her large dark eyes look out upon one, as doubtless they did of old upon her admirers, and notably distinguish her portrait from those of her daughters.

The history of the window is an interesting one, and worthy of a short notice.  In the days of Agnes Danvers the lord of Long Melford was Sir John Clopton, of an old Suffolk family, son of Sir William Clopton, and his wife, Margaret Franceys.  Sir John (born in 1423; died 1497) was a stout Lancastrian, and was at one time committed, with four or five companions, to the Tower by the Yorkists, who were just then the uppermost party.  It is told that his companions were all beheaded,5.133 but that Sir John managed to make his peace with his gaolers, and lived to be executor to the wills of many great people— amongst others to those of Ann, Duchess of Buckingham, and of Dame Agnes Say.

Perhaps in gratitude for his deliverance from the Tower, Sir John determined to pull down the old Norman Church of Long Melford, and to build in its place the grand church which still dominates the village green and village.  Seventy-two windows, it is said, the church displayed, and all of these Sir John or his immediate descendants filled with painted glass, chiefly portraits of their friends and connections.  But evil days came upon this, as upon so many other churches—days when men went about searching for what they were pleased to call ‘superstitious imagery,’ and many a fair window and many a grand tomb, memorials of the illustrious and pious dead, were wantonly destroyed, often because they bore the pious petition that their successors in the faith would pray for the welfare of the souls of those departed.  And so it came about that when, in the year 1688, the history of the church was written by the then vicar, but eighteen of the painted windows remained, and those in a mutilated state.  Destruction went on till the year 1828, when, and again in 1862, the fragments of the painted glass were collected, and sufficient was found to fill three windows—the great east window and the two west windows of the aisles.  And, marvellous to relate, of the few figures which survived, three were those of Dame Agnes Say and her two daughters.

Formerly these portraits were in the ninth window, from the west, of the north aisle, where they occupied the upper compartments, while below were two of the Clopton family and the wife of Sir William, the son of Dame Agnes’ friend, Sir John.  These now occupy a portion of the west window of the south aisle.5.134 The minor tracery at the top of the window is filled with fragments of figures of saints and coats of arms.  In the first light, on the south side, is the figure of a saint, over the portrait of Anna, wife of Sir John Boughton, daughter of John Denston and Catherine, sister to Sir John Clopton.  Beneath her is a small figure and the Clopton and other arms.  In the next light, at top is an angel, then the portrait of Margaret, wife of Thomas Peyton; beneath her are the arms of East Anglia, and fragments; beneath these Lady Howard.  Centre light, St Michael; beneath Thomas Rookwood, who married Ann, daughter of Sir John Clopton, and also a Hilton.  Beneath these is Ann Darcy, sister to Sir John’s wife, married to John Montgomery.  In the next light, above is an angel, below is Dame Agnes Say, with the arms, ermine a fess sable between three beehives or, of her second husband, Sir John Fray, emblazoned on her mantle, and those of Brancestre on her under garment.  Beneath, ‘Pray for Dna Annes Fray.’  Beneath Dame Agnes Fray are sundry emblems of the Trinity, a small figure of the resurrection, and the badge of the White Roses.  Beneath is Dame Agnes’ daughter, Dame Elizabeth Waldegrave.  She bears her husband’s arms—per pale argent and gules—on her mantle; her father’s on her under-garment.  In the next light, above is an angel, beneath which is a man in a surcoat of arms (unknown); beneath him a coat of arms and small figures.  Next, underneath, is Dame Margaret Lynham, wearing her husband’s arms—vert a chevron between three lions’ heads erased or, on each as many gouttés gules—on her surcoat, and those of her father, Sir John Fray, on her under-garment.  Beneath, among many fragments, is the fine head of a lady and a small crowned head of a man.

Amongst the figures in the window of the north aisle, which corresponds to that just described, is one of Elizabeth Tilney, wife of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, who commanded at Flodden Field, and was restored in 1514 to the dukedom of Norfolk.  She was the daughter of Frederick Tilney, Esq., and Elizabeth Cheney.  Her mother, as we have seen, took as her second husband Sir John Say, and their son, Sir William Say, married Elizabeth, widow of Sir Thomas Waldegrave, and daughter of his stepmother, Agnes (Danvers), by her second husband, Sir John Fray.

Two matches of the family5.135 connected the Cloptons with that of Sir John Say—first, his niece Elizabeth, daughter of his brother Thomas Say, married William Clopton, grandson of Sir John, while another grandson of Sir John’s—Richard Clopton—married a Waldegrave.  MS. No. 318 of Lambeth Palace contains in the handwriting of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the pedigrees of many county families.  Amongst others is that of the descendants of the marriage of Geoffrey Gates, great-grandson of Thomas Baldington and Agnes Danvers, with Elizabeth, daughter of William Clopton, a marriage which forms another link between the families of Clopton and Say.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE

5.1 Foss’s Biographical Dictionary of the Judges.

5.2 Close Roll, 12 Henry VI (1433), Oxon, m.x.  General retainers were customary in Robert’s day.  He received 6s. 8d. annually from Bicester Priory as his fee.  Cf. Rev. J. C. Blomfield’s Deanery of Bicester, Part ii.

5.3 Close Roll of 18 Henry VI (1439).

5.4 Noorthouck’s History of London.  London, 1773.

5.5 Parliamentary History, vol. i., p. 374.

5.6 Professor Montagu Burrows’ Worthies of All Souls.

5.7 C. T. Martin’s Archives of All Souls College.

5.8 Antony Wood’s History of the Oxford Colleges, p. 305, edition of 1786.

5.9 See preface to C. T. Martin’s Archives of All Souls College.

5.10 Stubbs’ Constitutional History, vol. iii, p. 43.

5.11 Fabyan’s Chronicle.

5.12 William of Worcester (1471) says Robert Danvers was Justiciar of the Commission extemporized to try Lord Saye.  (See also p. NO TAG.)

5.13 Biographical History of Judges of England.  Common Pleas.

5.14 Metcalfe’s Book of Knights.

5.15 Agnes Strickland’s Lives of Queens of England, vol. iii, p. 322.

5.16 Bright’s History of England, vol. i, p. 351.

5.17 Additional MSS. 38817, 38824, 38827, 38828, 38832, 38833, and 38836.

5.18 For descent of the manors see Chapter Nine.

5.19 Close Roll of 32 Henry VI (1453),  (M. 13).

5.20 Northampton fine No. 31 of 21 Henry VI (1442).

5.21 Baker’s Northampton, vol. i., p. 513.

5.22 Catalogue of Ancient Deeds (Record Office), vol. i, C. 1200.

5.23 Fine No. 8, Divers Counties, 2 Edward IV (1462).

5.24 Close Roll, 3 Edward IV (1463), m. 24, dors.

5.25 Bishop of Lincoln’s Institutions, Bishop of Lincoln’s Registry, Lincoln.

5.26 PM Inquis., No. 46 taken at Charlebury, May 13, 7 Edward IV (1467).

5.27 Will: 18 Godyn.

5.28 Cf. C. J. Robinson’s Mansions and Houses of Herefordshire; also Harleian MSS. 1,140 and 1,149, and Duchess of Cleveland’s Battle Abbey Roll.  Baker, in the pedigree of the Danvers family, History of Northampton, 1, p. 604, makes Agnes Quatermayn the wife of Robert Danvers, but does not give any authority for his statement, nor have we been able to find such; while there is ample evidence that Sir Robert’s first wife was Agnes Delabar.

5.29 Harleian MS. 1,556, f. 126b, Harleian MS. 1,097, f. 6, and Harleian MS. 4,204, f. 78b, evidence that Sir Robert’s wife was the daughter of Delabar and widow of Horle (sic).  In the Visitation of Hereford we find corroboration, William Herle, in the pedigree of that family, marrying Agnes, daughter of Sir Richard Delabar.  Aske, in his pedigree of the family, states the marriage as above, as also does the middle sixteenth century roll, Harleian, p. 10.  Cf. Heralds’ College MSS., Vincent 56, p. 221, Robert Danvers and his family.

5.30 Visitation of Berks, Harleian MS. 1,139, fs. 109 and 78, and MS. 1,532, f. 40.  T. W. Weare’s Great Haseley Church, second edition, 1848.  See also will of Drugo Barentyne, father of Katherine, amongst Ancient Lincoln Wills, published in 1888 by Mr A. Gibbons at Lincoln.  The will mentions amongst others his son Drugo, and his daughter Katherine married to William Fetiplace, and Margaret married to John Cotysmore.

5.31 Barentynes; see T. W. Weare’s Great Haseley Church, also Journal of Oxon Archaeological Society, 1874; also Leland’s Itinerary; Aske in vol. i of Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica; and Clarke’s Hundred of Wantage.

5.32 Additional Charter (British Museum) 38,845.

5.33 In the Fettiplace pedigree given in Elinor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book by Hilary Spurling, a William Fettiplace, who was probably the first husband of Katherine Barentyne, is shown with a daughter Anne (sole heir) who married Hugh Unton of Wadley.  Perhaps Anne, rather than Sybil, married ‘Upton’. -Ed.

5.34 Harleian Society’s vol. xii, Visitation of Warwick of the year 1619, for their descendants; Baker’s History of Northampton, vol. i, p. 604; and Aske in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. i, p. 324.

5.35 Harleian Society’s publications, vol. i; Baker, and Aske as above.

5.36 Cf. History of South Mimms, by the Rev. F. C. Cass, M.A., 1877.  Baker’s History of Northampton, vol. i, p. 604; and Aske in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. i, p. 324; also Harleian MSS. 1,177, p. 135, and No. 1,521, p. 62b.

5.37 Dr Bright (vol. i, p. 351).

5.38 Wotton’s Baronetage, vol. i, p. 500.

5.39 Magdalen College, 4A, Clifton and Deddington.

5.40 Green’s Short History, edition 1889, p. 272.

5.41 L.T.R., Customs Enrolled Accounts, 36-38 Henry VI (1457-59).

5.42 Gibbin’s Industrial History of England, p. 92.

5.43 Hubert Hall’s History of the Customs Revenue in England.  London 1885.

5.44 Blomfield’s History of Deanery of Bicester, Part ii, p. 128.

5.45 Record Office Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, vol. i, C. 1200.

5.46 Historical Commission Series, Vol. x, Record Office numbering, p. 131.

5.47 Rendle’s Old Southwark and its People.  Southwark, 1878.

5.48 Close Roll, 4 Edward IV (1464), M. 12, dors., and Close Roll, 5 Edward IV (1465) M. 28, dors.

5.49 See Smith’s Antiquities of Westminster, and Strype’s edition of Stowe’s Survey of London, vol. ii, p. 62.

5.50 Close Roll, 12 Edward IV (1472), M.x. Fine No. 22 of 9 Edward IV (1469), Northampton.  Fine No. 89, Northampton, of 12 Edward IV (1472).  Fine No. 8 of 2 Edward IV (1462).  See also Additional Charters (British Museum), Nos. 38,849 to 38,865, which record the transactions between Richard Danvers and the heirs of his brother Robert.

5.51 Additional Charters 38,866 and 38,869; also PM Inquis. of Richard Danvers the elder.  Additional Charters (British Museum) 38,861-64.

5.52 The shield was on the wall of Bicester Church in 1574, and for many years after; but how many years previously is not known.

5.53 Will: Milles 32.

5.54 Browne Willis  (p. 164).

5.55 Rev. J. C. Blomfield’s History of Deanery of Bicester, Part iii, p. 62, et seq.

5.56 Browne Willis’s History of the Hundred of Buckingham and Dunkin’s Oxfordshire, vol. i, p. 197.

5.57 PM Inquis. No. 38. 13 Henry VI (1434), John Langston de Caresfield.  This inquisition is now ‘deest’.

5.58 Kennett.

5.59 Lipscomb’s Bucks, vol. ii, p. 594; Kennett’s Parochial Antiquities, vol. ii, pp. 219 and 240.

5.60 Browne Willis  (p. 164).

5.61 PM Inquis. of 3 Henry VII (1487).

5.62 Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. i.

5.63 Nos. 31 and 46 of 18 Henry VIII (1526).

5.64 Close Roll of 1 Henry VIII (1509), No. 17 in margin of roll.

5.65 In the City of London Hustings Roll of 1484, John Newport sells to John Langston a tenement in St Stephen’s, Walbrook.

5.66 Exchequer Escheats, series 2, file 5. His heir is his son Richard, aged 40 and upwards.

5.67 Aske’s pedigree of the Danvers family and Harleian MS., 1,553, f. 94b.

5.68 Browne Willis.

5.69 Blomfield’s History of Deanery of Bicester, Part iii, p. 62, et seq.

5.70 PM Inquis., 18 Henry VIII (1526), Nos. 31 and 46, and Close Roll of 1 Henry VIII.  Also Dunkin’s Oxfordshire, vol. i, p. 197.

5.71 Harleian MS. 1,553, p. 94b.

5.72 Will: 12 Adeane.

5.73 Wood MS., E.1, p. 179, Bodleian.

5.74 Will: 34 Bodfelde.

5.75 Giffard pedigree, Lipscomb’s Bucks, vol. iii, p. 131.

5.76 Ashmole’s Berks, edition of 1723, vol. iii, p. 299.

5.77 Browne Willis’s History of the Hundred of Buckingham (p. 280).

5.78 Browne Willis’s History of the Hundred of Buckingham (p. 281).

5.79 Lipscomb’s Bucks, vol. i, p. 406.

5.80 Will: 5 Sheffield.

5.81 Browne Willis p. 164, et seq.

5.82 Blomfield’s History of the Deanery of Bicester, part i, p. 14 and Parker’s Architectural Topography of England, County of Bucks, Caversfield.

5.83 Circa 1690, Wood MS., E. 1, f.179.

5.84 Lipscomb’s Bucks, vol. ii, p. 599.

5.85 Denton of Ambrosden.  See vol. v of Harleian Society.

5.86 Rawlinson MS., B. 400b.

5.87 Perhaps ‘Crop er wy,’ an eminence on the water.

5.88 Oxon Fine 28 of 24 Edward III (1350).

5.89 See History of Cropredy, by the Rev D. Royce, in Transactions (1879) of North Oxon Archaeological Society; also Close Roll M. 19 of 7 Henry V (1419).

5.90 In a charter of the time of Henry II, of Robert, son of Walquelin of Wicheham, Gaufrid de Croper signs as a witness (Lincoln, Registrum Antiquissimum, p. 19).  In 1225 (Queen’s College MS.) Simon de Croperia has a fief in Cropery, Kildesby, and Sutteford, and about this period we have Hugh and Philip de Cropperi in the Chaucombe Charters.  In the Roll of the Hundreds we have Simon de Cropredy in Croprech and elsewhere.  In the Queen’s College Roll of 1300, Henry de Cropry has a fief in Cropry, Shutford, and Kildesby.  In Lay Subsidy Roll of Oxon (161/9) of 1 Edward III (1327).  Simon de Cropery pays the largest subsidy at Cropery.  Further, we find the family associated with that of Danvers as witnesses, or otherwise, in several of the Chaucombe, Bourton, and other charters.  The family seems to have died out in the latter part of the reign of Edward III or in that of Richard II.

5.91 Beesley’s History of Banbury, p. 462.

5.92 The Rev William Wood, D.D.

5.93 Vol. i of the Rolls Series.  Materials for the History of the Reign of Henry VII, p. 379.

5.94 The dates for various births and marriages are drawn from the International Genealogical Index of the LDS.

5.95 Collins’ Baronetage, edition 1741, vol. i, p. 254; Betham’s Baronetage, vol. i, p. 125; Harleian Society’s Publications, vol. xii, p. 122; Harleian MS. 245, p. 29; Lee’s History of St Mary’s, Thame, p. 293.

5.96 Blore’s History of Rutland, p. 59.

5.97 Phillpotts’ Leicester and Warwick,  College of Arms 29, p. 78.

5.98 Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. i, p. 20.

5.99 For other notices of this John Danvers, see Northhampton Fine No. 71 of 38 Henry VI. (1460); also Close Roll 9 Edward IV. (1408), M. 36.

Lipscomb states that John Danvers was Rector of Hogston on the presentation of Lady Clinton in the year 1414.  But clearly Lipscomb confuses our John Danvers with another man of the same name, who, as we learn from the Lincoln Institutions, was made Rector of Hogston in 1414, after having held and officiated in another rectory—that of Apsley Guise, Beds.  This would put back this John’s birth to about the year 1390, and precludes his being our John Danvers, who we know died in the year 1504, and was not born till after A.D. 1422 (if the son of Joan Bruley) or 1400 (if the son of Alice Verney.)

5.100 History of Buckinghamshire, vol. iii, p. 376.

5.101 Additional Charter, 38,857.

5.102 PM Inquis., 15 Henry VI (1436), No. 28.

5.103 Close Roll of Edward IV, M. 36.  John Danvers, clerk demises to Agnes wife of Geoffrey Gate, Knt., formerly wife of William Brown of Halton, manors of Aldebery and Draycote and lands in Shipton, Charwell, and Weston.  Should Agnes die without heirs of her body, to pass to right heirs of her father, Thomas Baldington.

5.104 Oxon Fine 116 of 32 Henry VI (1453).

5.105 Inquis. 20 Edward IV (1480). Morant’s Essex, 2, p. 146.

5.106 Lipscomb’s Bucks. vol. i, p. 205.

5.107 Burke’s Extinct Baronetcies.

5.108 Will (23 Stockton) was made March, 1457.  See also Clutterbuck’s Hertfordshire, vol. ii, p. 491, and Foss’s Judges of England and Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. iv, p. 308.

5.109 No. 28 of 1 Edward IV (1461).

5.110 Plomer.

5.111 Harleian MS. 1,531:  also Lysons’ Bedfordshire and Fine No. 66 of 14 Henry VI, in which occur John Wenlock, his wife Elizabeth and John Delabere.  Also Nicholas’ Testamenta Vetusta, pp. 297, 343.

5.112 We are indebted to the Rev Henry Cobbe, Rector of Maulden, for this account of the pedigree of Lord Wenlock.

5.113 Harleian MS. 1,551, fol. 121.

5.114 Harleian MS. 1,557, fol. 74.

5.115 Manning’s Lives of the Speakers of the House of Commons.

5.116 Clutterbuck’s Hertfordshire, vols. ii., p. 391, and iii., p. 195.

5.117 The monuments of the Say family in Broxbourne Church are figured and described in Cussan’s History of Hertfordshire, vol. ii, part ii., p. 183.

5.118 PM Inquis. 18 Edward IV (1478), No. 43, and will dated April 10, 1478; proved October, 1478.

5.119 Herts Fine, No. 37 of 14 Edward IV (1474).

5.120 Harleian MS. 1,551, fol. 121, and MS. 1,557, fol. 74.

5.121 Newcourt’s Repertorium, vol. i, p. 44.

5.122 Kirby’s Annals of Winchester College (London, 1892), pp. 202, 203.

5.123 Dugdale’s History of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Ellis’s edition of 1818, p. 403.

5.124 Scholar of Winchester College, 1465-74; Fellow of New College, 1474-86; afterwards Bishop of St David’s, 1565 of Chichester, 1568.

5.125 Dean Say, with William of Wykeham and other distinguished ecclesiatics of Wykeham’s Colleges, is figured in one of the fifteenth- century drawings of Winchester College, from the Chandler MS., communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by T. F. Kirby, Esq., M.A., F.S.A.—Archæologia, vol. liii.

5.126 PM Inquis. 18 Edward IV (1478) No. 45.  Other references to Agnes Say and her family are, Aske in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. i, p. 320; Harleian MSS. 808, p. 42, 1556, 5187, p. 92, 4204, p. 60, 1393, p. 20; Lansdowne MS. 260, p. 106.

5.127 Clutterbuck’s Herts, vol. iii, p. 190, and vol. ii, pp. 63 and 195.

5.128 PM Inquis. 8 Edward IV (1468), No. 33.

5.129 Newark, 1797.

5.130 Will: 34 Wattys.

5.131 Cf. Cussan’s Hertfordshire, vol. ii, p. 310, and Vincent’s Collections, Heralds’ College, 56, pp. 220, 221; also Oxon Fine No. 116 of 32 Henry VI (1453).

5.132 Sir W. Parker’s History of Long Melford.

5.133 From Sir W. Parker’s description of the windows, and from notes lately made on the spot by the writer. -Macnamara.

5.134 For Clopton, see Harleian MS. 1449, and Harleian MS. 155, p. 31b; also Harleian Society’s Publications, vol. xiii.

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Digital edition first published: 1 Mar 2020             Updated: 17 Jul 2023                garydanvers@gmail.com