A.D. 1347 - 1450

Our history has brought us to the year 1347, when the name of John Danvers of Epwell appears in a Lay Subsidy Roll amongst those who might be called on to pay an aid which had been demanded by the King.  The roll concerns six hundreds in the south of Oxfordshire, one of them being that of Thame.  Unfortunately, the rolls of the northern hundreds are wanting, excepting a fragment of that of Banbury Hundred—a small parchment slip,4.1 and in such bad condition that only three or four of the names entered in it can be deciphered.  Amongst them is that of William de La Legh, of Swalecliffe and Shutford, father-in-law, we believe, of John Danvers.

CONTEMPORARY EVENTS

The great charter allowed three occasions on which the King might lawfully demand an aid of his subjects, and one of these was the knighting of his eldest son.

Edward III at Cressy

In July of the year 1346, the King, Edward III, with the army which he had collected, landed at La Hogue in Normandy, intending to march through France into Flanders, where he would be joined by his Flemish allies; but, defeated by the strategy of the French King, he was obliged to retreat northwards, and at length, as the only means of saving his army from an ignominious surrender, on August 25, fought and won against fearful odds the battle of Cressy.  Thence the King with his victorious army marched to undertake the siege of Calais, and in the siege he was still engaged when, in March, 1347, Parliament was sitting at Westminster.  There messengers arrived from the Earl of Northampton and others who were with the King bringing information that on landing at La Hogue the King had knighted his eldest son, the Black Prince, and ought to have an aid of the realm, forty shillings of every knight’s fief.  To this the Parliament heartily assented, and took order for the speedy levying of the aid, and thus it came about that in an old roll of the period we find recorded the names of John and Roger Danvers. 4.2

After the fall of Calais the King returned in triumph to England; for not only in the north, but in the south of France also, his armies were victorious, while in the north of England the victory of Neville’s Cross had broken the power of Scotland, and David, the King, was Edward’s prisoner.  England was full of joy and exultation; the King at home and abroad was honoured, and the people were prosperous.  ‘It seemed,’ writes the old chronicler Walsingham, ‘as if a new sun had arisen on account of the abundance of peace, and the plenty of glories of victories.’

The Black Death

But all this joy and prosperity were shortly turned to gloom and misery, for in August, 1348, broke out in England that fearful pestilence known as ‘the Black Death,’ which, spreading westwards from China, had desolated the countries through which it had passed, including Germany, Italy, and France.  From Dorsetshire, where it first appeared in England, the pestilence rapidly spread by way of Gloucester and Oxford to London, in which city it is said to have slain a hundred thousand people.  On its way the plague ravaged towns and villages, stripping some of them of their inhabitants, and slaying, as has been calculated, from one-third to one-half of the population of England.  The records of the period show that the religious houses were terribly afflicted, many of them losing nine-tenths of their inmates.  So fierce was the plague that its victims died within a few hours of their seizure, so contagious that in terror their nearest relatives fled on its approach.

Clergy and laity were alike demoralised by the visitation and in the religious houses a permanent decline in discipline and in learning was its consequence, while it was very long before the places of the parochial clergy who perished could be supplied by men of the same stamp and fitness as those who had preceded them.  Amongst the laity, also, the consequences of the pestilence, both to landowners and to the labourers and artisans, were very pronounced.  It is said that about one-half the number of the available labourers perished, and the landholders were therefore obliged to pay higher wages in order to secure the help which they needed for the cultivation of their land.  So it came about that agricultural wages rose fifty per cent, a rise which was a permanent one.  But though the cost of labour rose, that of the simple food which the labourer consumed was almost unchanged.  He therefore flourished, and enjoyed no small amelioration of his former condition.

As to the landholders,4.3 and those of them more especially whose estates were small, they suffered not merely from the rise in the cost of wages, but also from the increased cost of all agricultural implements, the production of which needed labour of a skilled sort.  Moreover, the tenants could no longer pay the old rents, and much of the land went out of cultivation, or lapsed to the over-lord, owing to the inability of the smaller gentry to pay the heriots and fees which they owed.

DANVERS FAMILY

It is clear that the Danvers family at this period suffered very great losses, both in numbers and in their possessions.  John Danvers of Epwell, his son Richard, and their cousin Roger of Tetsworth appear to have been the only members of the family who escaped the pestilence, and all that remained to them of the large landed property of Robert Danvers of Bourton was the manor of Epwell, a small holding in Tetsworth, and land in Fanflore which was only nominally theirs.

John Danvers and his wife Isabel no doubt lived and died on their manor of Epwell, but the date of their deaths we do not know, nor do we know certainly that they had more than one son, the Richard who succeeded his father at Epwell.  Vincent evidently had reason to think that there was a second son, John, who became ‘the ancestor to the Dalverses of Sweetland, which lordship they had by marriage of the heire of Waleys.  And the same John had issue John.’ 4.4  But Vincent, in the pedigree, connects this John by a dotted line with John of Epwell, thus showing that the evidence of the descent which he possessed was not conclusive.  However, he raises no doubt as regards Richard of Epwell, son of John of Epwell, and he records his match with the daughter of John de Brancestre, and figures their shield the three (four?) bendlets and three scallop- shells in chief of Danvers, impaling the three martlets on a bend of Brancestre.

Richard Danvers of Epwell

‘Richard Danvers of Ipswell,’ the son of John Danvers, is uniformly so called by the genealogists of the family.  ‘Richard of Epwell’ he is called in two ancient deeds dated respectively A.D. 1388 and 1390, now in possession of Magdalen College, Oxford,4.5 in which he is interested in land in Epwell, the inheritance of Agnes, daughter of William Althyn.4.6  ‘Richard of Ipswell,’ too, Richard Danvers styles himself in the charter which he gives to Eynsham Abbey, and in which he states his descent from his great-grandfather, Robert Danvers.

Agnes Brancestre and Calthorpe

But though brought up at Epwell, Richard Danvers early in his life became associated by his marriage with the town of Banbury.  His wife was Agnes, daughter and heiress of Sir John Brancestre, who, judging from the payments entered in a Lay Subsidy Roll of the period, was, after the Bishop of Lincoln, who was lord of the castle, the principal inhabitant of the town.  Calthorpe manor-house, situated in what was then a suburb of Banbury, was Sir John’s dwelling-place; there Richard Danvers succeeded him, and there many generations of the family dwelt.  ‘Danvers of Ipswell’ became also ‘Danvers of Calthorpe,’ while Richard and his descendants for many generations substituted the Brancestre for the Danvers arms upon their shield.  This, therefore, seems an appropriate place to digress for a little in order to give a few pages to a notice of the town of Banbury and the family of Brancestre.

BANBURY

Town

The general plan of the town appears to have been the same in the fourteenth century as at present.  Then, as now, a bridge across the valley of the Cherwell, carried the road from Northampton into Oxfordshire, but the many- arched thirteenth-century bridge has, with other buildings of the period, long since disappeared.  Near the bridge head, on slightly rising ground, stood the Norman castle, erected by Bishop Alexander in the year 1125, and at the time of which we are writing one of the principal houses of the Bishops of Lincoln.  The castle was demolished by order of Parliament in the year 1648, and its site is now marked by Castle Wharf and Castle Street, but of the fabric all that remains is three or four square feet of masonry, built into the wall of a cottage, and here and there in its neighbourhood a raised bank which probably once formed the border of the castle moat.

From the bridge the main street of the town took a westerly direction to the Cross, which was destroyed by the Puritans in the year 1602, but has now been rebuilt.  In Leland’s time, and probably long anterior to it, a ‘very celebrate markett’ was held every Thursday in the area around the Cross, and ‘a purle of fresh water’ ran through the area, but the ‘purle’ is no longer above ground, and a cattle market only is held there.  Beyond the cross the road ran on in a westerly direction to Broughton, Swalecliffe, and Epwell, while a cross road ran, as now, north and south, leading, in the former direction to Drayton, Horley, Bourton and Cropredy, and in the latter, through Adderbury and Deddington to Oxford—all places connected with the history of the Danvers family.  Near the Cross on the eastern side of the northern road stood Banbury old church, while on the eastern side of the southern road was Calthorpe, then a detached hamlet, with the manor-house and its pleasaunce separating it from Banbury.

Church

The old church of St Mary, Banbury, was built about the year 1140 by Bishop Alexander, of Lincoln, whose church and castle neighboured and faced one another across an intervening stretch of low ground.  The church was, in the main, of the Norman and Early English styles, but aisles, transepts, and chapels were added during the Decorated and Perpendicular periods.  Leland, Grose, and others who saw the church in its glory, describe it as a magnificent structure, of truly cathedral proportions and appearance, ornamented within with chantries, tombs, sculptures, and painted glass windows, beautiful in themselves and interesting as records of the worthies of the town and neighbourhood.  It was a church which, were it now standing, would in itself make Banbury famous,4.7 and ‘never was a more wanton and barbarous act perpetrated than the destruction of the old church of Banbury, nor one more entirely without excuse.  The Cross was destroyed by ignorant fanatics who were, to say the least, honest and disinterested; but for the destruction of the church there was no excuse, and in the year 1790, under the notoriously false pretext that it was in a dilapidated state, this splendid structure was pulled down,’ its piers and walls were blown to pieces by gunpowder, and every monument within its walls was ruthlessly destroyed.

Lee4.8 in 1574, and Sir William Dugdale in 1640, copied the arms in the church, and their notes are preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.  Amongst the arms were those of Danvers (Brancestre) and Bruly: ermine on a bend gules three martlets vert, quartering ermine on a bend gules three chevrons or.

Another, though comparatively modern, record of the Danvers family4.9 in Anthony Wood’s time, was on the north side of the chancel, where was a gravestone with the inscription:

‘Here lyeth the body of Captayn William Danvers,

second son of Sir John Danvers of Culworth, who dyed in the service of God and the King,

and was buried the 25th day of September, anno Domini 1643.

The organ, the bells and the registers of the old church were preserved, and the bells are in the present church; the oldest of them bears the inscription:

‘Bee it knowne to all that doe me see Bagley of Chacombe made mee 1664.’

Hospital of St John the Baptist

Another ecclesiastical building of ancient Banbury was the Hospital of St John the Baptist, which gave the name to St John’s Street, now South Bar Street.  The hospital stood without the bar on an eminence on its eastern side.  After the dissolution the shell of the fabric was long used as a barn, and according the Skelton,4.10 formed part of the premises of Calthorpe manor-house.  The building was purchased from Sir Henry Dashwood, who then owned Calthorpe House, by T. Cobb, Esq., who resold it in 1834, when the barn was converted into a dwelling-house.  Beesley mentions4.11 that the present walls of the building, with the exception of the eastern one, and also the present roof, appear to be ancient, and to have been left unmolested since the time of the dissolution, and he figures a small brass crucifix which was found on the site.

On the eastern side of Banbury Bridge was another religious house, the Hospital of St Leonard, for lepers.  The building has disappeared, but its site is still known as ‘The Spital.’

The town itself was but a small one, of less than a thousand inhabitants; it now contains nothing older than a few houses possibly of the time of Queen Elizabeth, excepting, perhaps, parts of Calthorpe House.  There was no manor- house in Banbury itself, for the Bishops of Lincoln were the lords of the manor, and occasionally occupied the castle.

BRANCESTRE FAMILY

In the Lay Subsidy Roll4.12 of the 2nd or 4th Richard II (1378 or 1380), John Brancester, armiger, heads the list of payments.  This was the John Brancestre whose daughter and heiress Richard Danvers married, and regarding whom Beesley writes:4.13  ‘For some generations Calthorpe was the residence of the family of Danvers.  Richard Danvers, styled of Calthorpe, married the heiress of John Brancestre, of Calthorpe, and is said to have been descended from Roland D’Anvers, of the time of William the Conqueror; he had a son, John Danvers, styled of Banbury and Calthorpe, who lived in the reigns of Henry the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth’ (1400 - 1460).  Richard Danvers4.14 assumed the Brancestre coat-of-arms, argent on a bend gules three martlets or winged vert, which his descendants still bear quartered with those of Danvers.

Calthorpe

The manor-house in which the Brancestres lived was reconstructed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and replaced by the present house, which since then has been altered and modernized, and is now divided into two dwelling-houses, while of the ancient pleasaunce only a small piece remains attached.

From the Danvers family the house passed by purchase to the Copes, and has since then been in the possession of the Chamberlains, the Hawtaynes— whose shield is carved above the present entrance—the Dashwoods and the Cobbs.  There is a tradition that a room in the house is the one in which dissent was first preached in Banbury, and its seems certain that the principal room—that with the oriel window—was used before the year 1688 by the congregation founded by the Rev. Samuel Webb, ejected minister of Banbury.  The same congregation used the room after the passing of the Act of Toleration till a new meeting-house was made ready for them, and the room was made more accessible by the addition of outside steps.  After the removal of the congregation, the house was used by the Messrs. Cobb as a factory, and a part of it was also used as a bank.  While in the possession of the Messrs. Cobb a part of the house, which was used as a factory, being very dilapidated, was pulled down.  In 1875, Mr Edward Cobb sold the house itself with the small remnant of ground immediately around it.4.15

Stained Glass Windows

Immediately above the present entrance an oriel window still remains, and lights the room which was formerly the hall of the mansion, and is the same which was in later times used as a chapel.  The window was no doubt at one time filled with stained glass, but of this very little remains; two coats-of-arms only are now recognisable—the one is that of Brancestre, beneath which is written— ‘Danvers long time owned Calthorpe.’ the other is Brancestre impaling Doyley, and beneath it is written, ‘Danvers matched Doyley.’  This, therefore, is the shield of George Danvers, who married Margaret Doyley, the Danvers whom we find paying the highest subsidies in Calthorpe in the years 1545 and 1566.  The exact date of his death is uncertain, but he died before 1575, and we may fairly assume that their shield was paced by him; if so, the window and that part of the present house is at least as old as the time of Queen Elizabeth.4.16

To return to John Brancestre, he seems to have acquired Calthorpe early in the reign of Richard II, for his name is absent from the very full Lay Subsidy Roll4.17 of 51 Edward III (1377), while it heads the roll of second or fourth Richard II (1379 or 1381).  But that he had land in Banbury as early as the year 1365 we know from a deed preserved at the Record Office,4.18 a grant by John Brancestre, of Bannebury, to Katherine, his sister, of 12d. yearly rent from a tenement in the town.  His wife’s name was Margaret, and we have some evidence that she was the daughter of Henry Mile, and widow of William de Welham.  The evidence is as follows: Dugdale, in his History of Warwickshire,4.19 states that the manor of Brokehampton, near Kineton, belonged temp. Henry III to John Mile, who had issue Richard Mile, and Richard had issue, Henry Mile.  Henry Mile’s daughter and heir, Margaret was wedded to William de Welham, and outlived him, being a widow in 30 Edward III (1356).  To this Margaret succeeded Sir John Brancestre as owner of the manor, but, says Dugdale, ‘whether by purchase or otherwise, I cannot directly affirm,’ which John demised all, or the greatest part thereof, to Robert Dalby, 51 Edward III (1377).  It seems, therefore, very probably that John Brancestre obtained the manor by marriage with the widow Margaret.

In Norfolk

John Brancestre, or de Brancestre—the name is written both ways and often u is inserted, i.e., Brauncestre—was probably son of the John Brancestre who appears in the Books of Aids, of 20 Edward III (1346), as holding half a knight’s fee in South Morton, Berks.  The family takes its name from the town of Brancaster in the north of Norfolk, in the time of the Romans a place of considerable importance, a port and a fortress for the defence of that part of the coast.  Blomfield, in his History of Norfolk,4.20 writes: ‘There was an ancient family of dignity who assumed their name from this place.  John de Brancestre was Vice-Chancellor of England, as appears from a patent of Richard I, and this John was Archdeacon of Worcester.’  This John de Brancestre was Vice- Chancellor under Walter Hubert in 1205, one of King John’s Chancellors, and on the death of Hubert the great seal remained in his custody until the King sold the Chancellorship to Robert de Gray.4.21

There are many notices of members of the Brancestre family in Blomfield’s History of Norfolk, from which we learn that their principal seat was Brancester Hall, in the parish of Berton.  In the year 1324, Adam, son of Thomas Brancester, released all his rights in the hall, and his other possessions to Adam Fincham.

In Banbury

In the year 1300 Richard de Brancestre was Rector of Banbury, and this was apparently the beginning of the connection of the family with that town.

About the year 13694.22 we find a Thomas de Brancestre settled at Culworth, near Banbury, where he had obtained a third share of its manors and appurtenances by his marriage with Agnes, relict of Hugh de Mussenden—an estate, however, which he did not long retain, for in 1375 he sold his share to the trustees appointed for Alice Perrers, mistress of King Edward III.

Thomas and Alan de Brancestre

We have no evidence that this Thomas de Brancestre was a relative to John de Brancestre, of Calthorpe, but the time and neighbourhood, and the name, an uncommon one, indicate relationship.  Nor have we evidence that Thomas or John de Brancestre came to Banbury from Norfolk.  On the contrary, it is not probable that a member of an inconsiderable Norfolk family would remove to Banbury, buying a property there.  It is far more likely that John de Brancestre, of Calthorpe, came from London, and that he was one of the successful city traders who at the period very commonly bought country estates.  Now, at an early period, as we learn from the Hustings Rolls and feet of fines of London, a branch of the Brauncestre family was established as goldsmiths in the City;4.23 in the year 1276 Thomas de Brauncestre, a goldsmith, had houses in the parishes of St Nicholas le Shambles, St Vedast, and All Hallows, Bread Street, and we learn that his wife’s name was Isabel, daughter of Reginald de Cambridge.  Thomas died prior to the year 1280, but he appears to have left a son, Thomas de Brauncestre ‘Junior,’ who died in the year 1308; he also was a goldsmith, and was of All Hallows, Bread Street.  Then we have an Alan de Brauncestre, in business in the City in the year 1280, dead in the year 1300.  His wife’s name was Imania, and she died in the year 1321.  Alan was a goldsmith, with a shop in Chepe in the parish of St Peter’s, Wood Street, and he had a ‘solar,’ probably the family dwelling-house as distinguished from the shop, in St Andrew’s, Castle Baynard.

Alan and John de Brancestre

Alan had a son, Alan, whose wife’s name was Agnes,4.24 who followed the same trade as his father at the shop in Chepe, and with a house in St Faith’s of the Crypt.  He died in the year 1336.  Then we have a John de Brauncestre, also a goldsmith, with a shop in Chepe, and probably brother or son to Alan.  He died in the year 1348.  Gilbert de Brauncestre, whose wife’s name was Dionisia,4.25 flourished in the City about the same time as John.  Thomas de Brauncestre died in the City in the year 1312.  In the year 1360, or thereabouts, died John de Brauncestre, a goldsmith, with a house in St Faith’s of the Crypt.  We find in the Hustings Rolls no further mention of the family after the time of this John de Brauncestre, and not improbably because about this time its most successful members migrated to the country.  At any rate, about this time we find, as already mentioned, a John de Brancestre with a half a fief in Berks, John de Brancestre settling at Calthorpe, Banbury, and Thomas de Brancestre at Culworth.

Therefore, it is very probable that John de Brancestre of Calthorpe was a goldsmith of the City branch of the family.  When first he appears at Banbury he is designated ‘armiger,’ while in later documents his title is ‘chevalier,’ one applied to knights who belonged to a certain order of knighthood.  His wife’s name, as we have seen, was Margaret, and, as we learn from a document catalogued amongst the ancient deeds4.26 in the Record Office, he had a son John, who pre-deceased him, and a brother Richard.  The document is a release from Richard Brancestre of Rothele, chaplain, to Richard Danvers of Banbury, of his rights in lands formerly the property of his brother, John Brancestre, and of Margaret his wife, and of John their son, in the town and field of Banbury, Calthorpe, and Wykham.  The deed is witnessed by Thomas Wakfield, Mayor, and by William Byssham, Bailiff of the town of Leicester.  The deed is dated Wednesday before Easter, 17 Richard II.

John de Brancestre was alive in the year 1378, for amongst the charters preserved at the Record Office is one dated 2 Richard II,4.27 in which he grants some tenements and lands to the Master of the Hospital of St John the Baptist, of Banbury.  In the year 1392 both he and his wife were dead, as appears from an entry in the Patent Roll4.28 of 16 Richard II, in which license is given to John Scotte to assign to the Vicar of Banbury a messuage and garden to keep up for ever a certain yearly anniversary on the Feast of St George, for the souls of John Brancestre, chevalier, and Margaret his wife.

RICHARD DANVERS AND AGNES BRANCESTRE

To return to Richard Danvers.  Born about the year 1330, or a few years later, he grew to manhood in the secluded village of Epwell, away from the ordinary lines of communication between the West Country and London, a circumstance to which he may have owed his safety during the years 1348 and 1349, when the Black Death, on its eastward march, ravaged and almost depopulated many neighbouring towns and villages. Richard Danvers arrived at manhood at a period which was one of great glory to the arms of England, when the victory of Poitiers had raised the Black Prince to the summit of his renown as a military commander, and the Kings of France, and Scotland were prisoners in London.

But it is not till the year 1365 that we find authentic record of the name of Richard Danvers,4.29 and then he appears as a juror in a King’s Inquisition, and again in the same capacity in the year 1368.

The next notice that we have of Richard is in an Oxon fine (1369),4.30 and it is an interesting record, as in it we find him buying a house, seven virgates of land, and seventeen acres of meadow in Little Bourton—probably a portion of the ancestral property, and we may mention in illustration of the cheapness of land and the value of money at the period, that Richard pays for the house land—about two hundred acres—only ten silver marks.

The next notice of Richard Danvers is in the charter, dated 1386, by which he confirms to Eynesham Abbey the land in Fanflore which his ancestor Robert had some hundred and fifty years before granted to it, and, comparing the beautiful penmanship of the early charter, with the slovenly, ill-written entry of Richard’s deed, we are forcibly reminded of the temporary decadence in the discipline and learning of the religious houses which the ravages of the Black Death had caused.  The text of the charter has already been given in the appendix to Chapter Three.

Contemporary Events

Excepting in Epwell, the old possessions of the Danvers family had been alienated by sale or in the way of dower to daughters of the family.  And not only were the possessions of the then members of the family curtailed, the tenures of those lands Richard Danvers still possessed differed much from those which had prevailed in the time of his great-grandfather, Robert.  Richard was still lord of the manor of Epwell, but the ancient feudal organization was gone; his tenants were no longer his personal dependents, working out their service to him in barn and field, with ‘no choice of a master or of a sphere of toil;'4.31 the land was now leased to farmers, who paid their rents in money or in kind, while the labourer was free to work where he would, and for the highest wages he could secure.  John Ball, the mad priest of Kent, had proclaimed the natural equality and the rights of man.  Wyclif was appealing to the people at large against the corruptions and extortions of the Church, the Lollards were preaching religious equality to the peasantry in every village, while the neighbouring University of Oxford had become the ‘fount and centre of the new heresies.’

The country gentry, in alliance with the burgesses of the towns, were becoming a power in the state, and, by transferring his residence from Epwell manor-house to Calthorpe, Richard Danvers obtained opportunities of advancement, and a position far more influential, than that which would have been his as a country squire.

About the end of the fourteenth century we find mention of Richard Danvers in several contemporary documents; thus in the years 1395 and 1401 he is a King’s assessor.4.32  Amongst the muniments of Magdalen College, Oxford, are two, dated respectively 1388 and 1390, in which, as already noticed, Richard Danvers, of Epwell, is mentioned.  In the year 13954.33 we find Richard Danvers and his wife Agnes selling houses and land at Upton, near Northampton; and in 13994.34 Richard buys land in Nethrop, a suburb of Banbury.

Amongst the MSS. at the College of Arms is a collection of copies of old charters made by Richard Glover, Somerset Herald, in 1570, and amongst these, at page 8, is a note of one dated 1403, of Richard Danvers, of Banbury, and his son John.  The charter has not been preserved, but Glover gives a rough sketch of the seal, and adds: ‘cui appendit tale sigillum.4.35  In circumferentia predicti sigilli sic legitur carmen.  Est aquilæ capitis signumque figura Johannis.’

Arms

The armorial bearings on the shield are the same as those given by Vincent in his pedigree of the Danvers family, three (or four) bendlets, and three escallops in chief.  On each side of the shield, in a half circle, is an eagle, the sign of St John, to which the motto refers.  And the charter was no doubt one to the hospital of St John at Banbury, to which, as we have seen, Sir John Brancestre was a benefactor.

Death

We have not, unfortunately, either the will or the post-mortem inquisition of Richard Danvers, and we do not know the date of his death,4.36 which, however, must have been in the early part of the fifteenth century, when he had witnessed the marriage of his son John with Alice Verney, and the birth of more than one grandchild.

JOHN DANVERS OF CALTHORPE

John Danvers, who succeeded his father at Epwell and Calthorpe, married first Alice Verney, and secondly Joan Bruley.  Of their ancestry we shall give an account in Chapter Seven.  In the Heralds’ Visitations,4.37 in which these marriages are recorded, John Danvers is called of Epwell and Banbury.  By his first wife he had three sons, Robert, Richard and John, and one daughter, Agnes or Annys.

John Danvers cannot have been born later than the year 1382, as in the year 1403 he is of age to join his father in giving a charter.  In the year 1413, the first year of the reign of Henry V,4.38 we find him, with others, engaged in founding the chantry of the Blessed Mary in Banbury Church, where for ever two priests were daily to say Masses for the souls of the King, and of Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, of Philip de Repingdon, Bishop of Lincoln, and of John Danvers, and others who are named.  Then, thirty-five years after, we find John Danvers and others founding a fraternity or guild of Saint Mary of Banbury to support certain religious services and chaplains, and eight poor persons dwelling in the almshouse, and their successors in the same place for ever.

The old almshouse was pulled down in 1711, when the present house was built by Francis, Lord North and Guilford, and the inmates still receive in the form of an endowment, formerly called the ‘weekly,’ and now the ‘widows’, ’ groats, the benefits of the guild founded by John Danvers and his fellow townsmen in 1448.

Purchases Easington Manor and Other Land

In the year 1431 the Bishop of Lincoln4.39 sold to John Danvers his manor of Esendon (Easington), by Banbury, with houses and lands, etc., belonging thereto, together with the warren of Warden, and the work due from tenants of Nethrop and Calthorpe, with amercements, etc., in the court of the Bishop and his successors, and also his fishery in the Cherwell.

In the Close Rolls and Oxfordshire fines of this period, we find the record of many purchases of houses and lands by John Danvers:  in 1417, in Bourton Magna and Parva, and the same year in Wardington Bourton, Banbury, and Tusmere, and again, in 1420, property in Wardington, and Bourton.4.40  In 1439, in conjunction with his eldest son Robert Danvers, John Danvers bought from John Vernon land and houses in Wycombe, Taplow, Hutcham and Hedsore,4.41 and at the same time he, with his second son, Richard, bought an angular tenement in a new street in Deddington.

Purchases Prescote Manor

Then we find him in 1419 making one of the most notable of his purchases, that of Prescote Manor and its appurtenances, with lands in Prescote, Cropredy, Wardington, Williamscote, Mollington, Bourton Magna and Parva, Banbury and Shottswell, all of which he bought of Sir Thomas Cottesford4.42 and his wife Alice.4.43  Of Prescote Manor more will be said hereafter; at present let it suffice to note that John Danvers was buying back the lands in Bourton and the neighbourhood which belonged to his ancestors, whom we have frequently found associated with the lords of Prescote, Cropredy, Williamscote and Wardington, in charters to the Priory of Chaucombe and other neighbouring religious foundations.  Prescote remained with John’s descendants till the year 1721.

Purchases the Manor of Saint Amand

In Oxon fine, 85 of 18 Henry VI (1439), we find John Danvers and others buying from Sir Thomas Wykeham the manor of Saint Amand, (so called because it belonged formerly to the family of that name)4.44 in Adderbury, with its appurtenances in that parish, and in the hamlet of Milton.  Other names are mentioned in the fine, but Sir Thomas Wykeham was the seller, and John Danvers was the purchaser of the manor, and to his son, Sir Thomas Danvers, the manor passed at his death.  At Adderbury a branch of the Danvers family remained till the reign of Charles II (circa. 1450).

Dowries of Alice Verney and Joan Bruley

In addition to the above and other lands which John Danvers bought, he received as dowry with his first wife, Alice Verney, land in Byfield, and with his second wife, Joan Bruley, who was a considerable heiress, the manor of Waterstock, and the advowson of the church, the manor of Henton, in Oxfordshire, the manor of Corston, in Wilts, and the advowson of the chapel there.  John Danvers was evidently a wealthy man, and it seems very probable that he gained a portion of his wealth by trading.

Knight in Three Parliaments

He was Knight of the Shire of Oxford in three Parliaments, those of November 1420, November 1421, and September 1423.  In the first two of these he had as one of colleagues his distant cousin, Sir William Danvers, who at the time represented the county of Berkshire, and was then, or shortly after, knighted.  John Danvers does not appear to have been a knight, and, indeed, if we look through the rolls of the members of the period, we find that a large proportion of the knights of the shires were simple esquires, but it was ordered that the persons chosen should be notable knights of the shire which elected them, or else notable squires, gentlemen of birth, capable of becoming knights, and no man of the degree of yeoman or below it was eligible.4.45

Contemporary Events

Most commonly the Parliaments were at this time held at Westminster, yet not infrequently at Winchester, and occasionally at Oxford, Northampton, Coventry, and other cities and towns.

At Westminster the Parliament assembled in the Painted Chamber, so called from the pictorial decorations of its roofs and walls, a chamber which originally formed a part of Edward the Confessor’s palace, but had been enlarged and adorned during the reign of Henry III.4.46 Until the accession of Henry VII this chamber was used for meetings of the full Parliament, for the opening speech of the Chancellor, and as the place of conference between the two houses.  Extending nearly at a right angle from the east end of the Painted Chamber was the old House of Lords, rebuilt probably by Henry II, on foundations of the time of Edward the Confessor’s reign.  Beneath were the vaults, the ancient kitchens of the old palace, in which, in after times, the Gunpowder Plot conspirators stored their explosives.  All these buildings have been long since swept away, but the adjacent Chapter House of the Abbey, in which, until the reign of Edward VI, the Commons usually sat, still remains.  ‘The visitor of today, as he pauses at the entrance of the Chapter House of Westminster, may be reminded that it was within the walls of that ancient council-chamber of monks—where he can still see the spot where successive abbots and priors sat in their stalls of office—that for nearly three centuries the members of the English House of Commons—from the time when in the troubled reign of the royal builder of that fair edifice; it first assumed a separate and independent form, down to the reign of the boy-king, Edward VI—found from the first their most usual, and in a few years their regular and accustomed Metropolitan Parliament-House.’  It was thither that the ‘knights, citizens, and burgesses’ were summoned from shire and city and borough town by royal writ to meet in the House of the Chapter in the great cloister of the Abbey of Westminster, to consider the calls for pecuniary aid in expenditure at home, or in the prosecution of foreign wars.4.47

And there, in November, 1420, from Calthorpe or Epwell, or Prescote, or Waterstock, came John Danvers, at a time when many thoughtful men were trembling for the outcome of Henry V’s victories in France, and were longing for his return to England.  The King was represented at Westminster by his brother, Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, and the Parliament of November 1420, was opened by the new Chancellor, Thomas Longley, Bishop of Durham, who took for his text the words:  ‘Confortamini et viriliter agite et gloriosi eritis.’  Gloucester did not ask the Parliament for money, for money was very scarce; moreover, the peace was becoming troubled in the North, and the Chancellor had little on which to congratulate the Parliament, excepting the decrease of the Lollards.  Influenced by him, the Lords passed an order that Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, should be burnt, under the sentence passed upon him as a heretic—while the Commons passed an Act by which all foreign merchants bringing wool to England were obliged to pay into the Mint an ounce of gold, and for three pieces of tin the same,—an Act which was no doubt intended to protect the English merchants in two of the main products of the country—wool and tin.  Lords and Commons alike sent a pressing invitation to the King and his bride, Katherine of France, to visit England.

And so the King came home, and magnificent was the reception which with his wife he received, and shortly he summoned a Parliament, which met in May 1421, and was opened by a speech from the King himself, in which he represented the state of affairs,4.48 the conquests he had made in France, and the supplies which were needful to continue the war; assuring the Parliament that the Dauphin and his party, who maintained some cities and provinces, once subdued, France might be entirely united to the English Crown.  But the reverses which, during his absence, his armies suffered, obliged the King to return to France, and on 10 June 1421, he left England never to return.

John Danvers in Parliament

In December following, the need for further supplies obliged the Regent, the Duke of Bedford, to call a Parliament, at which John Danvers was again present as one of the knights of the shire for Oxford.  With the consent of the other House the Commons granted a liberal subsidy, but with the proviso that the first half of it should be paid in the money then current, and it was also ordered that all such money should pass if not notoriously clipped and washed.  On December 6, during the sitting of this Parliament, Henry of Windsor was born, and in the following May the Queen left England to join her husband, who died in August 1422, at Vincennes, in the thirty-fourth year of his age.

John Danvers was absent from the first Parliament of Henry VI, but he sat in the following one, which assembled in October 1423, in the Painted Chamber at Westminster, under the presidency of the Duke of Gloucester, the Protector of the Kingdom.  Lord Chancellor Longley, Bishop of Durham, opened the proceedings with a speech from the text ‘Fear God, honour the King,’ exhorting the Parliament to give to the King the love and honour which they had given to this father.  Near the throne were many nobles who were to take an active part in coming events—amongst them John Danvers would see Henry, Earl of Northumberland, Edmund, Earl of March, and Richard, Earl of Warwick, and doubtless amongst them was present Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, the uncle and rival for power of the Protector.

The Commons chose John Russell as their Speaker, and a committee of the House shortly waited upon the Duke Gloucester to thank him for the treaty which had been made with Scotland, and for the release and marriage of James, the King of Scotland, who had been married to Jane, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, niece therefore to the Bishop of Winchester.  Three other ladies also occupied the attention of John Danvers and his confrères—Joan, the Dowager Queen of Henry IV, had her dower and all her arrears restored to her, while two foreign ladies were naturalized, Anne, the sister of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, whom the Duke of Bedford had married, and Jacqueline, of Hainault and Holland, who had left her husband, John, Duke of Brabant, on the plea of too near consanguinity, and, coming for refuge to England, married the Duke of Gloucester.

All Souls College

To return to John Danvers.  If Anthony Wood was right, John Danvers employed some of his wealth in adding to the buildings of Archbishop Chicheley’s newly-founded college, All Souls, Oxford.  Wood writes, ‘On the north side of the chapel is a quadrangular cloister begun in the founder’s time (before 1443), finished with the moneys of Thomas Overy, and with those, as I conceive, of John Danvers, Esq., whose arms, impaling those of Bruley, are at this day remaining carved in stone over the east door of the cloister leading to the college walks.’ 4.49

Death

The last record of John Danvers which we have discovered is dated in 1448, and he must have died shortly after and was probably buried in the chantry which he had helped to found in Banbury Church.  In the church, John’s shield, Brancestre impaling Bruley, was amongst those which Anthony Wood mentions in his time.

At Epwell, at Prescote and in Bourton, John Danvers was succeeded by his sons by his first wife, Robert and Richard; his third son, John, was a clerk in holy orders.  The property which he obtained as dowry with his second wife, together with Calthorpe and the Adderbury manor, went to Thomas Danvers, his eldest son by his second wife, with remainder to William, the second son.

Joan, widow of John Danvers, married Sir Walter Mauntell, of Nether Heyford, Northampton, and a stone formerly marked her resting-place in the village church.  But this, like all the monuments of her own family, is lost of destroyed, The Latin inscription cut on the stone mentioned her former husbands, Walter Mauntell and John Danvers.  In the year 14904.50 was proved the will of a Sir Walter Mauntell, in which he desires that he may be buried in the church of Lower Heyford, and he makes Amys, his wife, and William Danvers, Sergeant-at-law, his executors, but we have not been able to determine whether it was this Sir Walter who was the husband of Joan Bruley.

NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR

4.1  Lay Subsidy Roll, Oxon, 161/21.

4.2 Lay Subsidy Roll, Oxon (161/26), 12 Edward III (1338).  Six inquisitions, showing names of persons holding knights’ fees and other possessions in Wootton, Thame, and other four hundreds.

4.3 Cf. H. de B. Gibbin’s Industrial History of England, p. 72.

4.4 Vincent MS. 51, p. 34, Heralds’ College.

4.5 Clifton and Deddington, 35 and 20.

4.6 No doubt the William Althyn, or Halthem, of Epwell—the name is variously  spelt—who was one of the witnesses to the charter by which John of Epwell received the manor of that place.

4.7 Cf. Beesley’s Banbury, p. 148, et seq., for a full description of the old church.

4.8 Wood’s MS., D. 14, No. 8,548, and Dugdale MS., F. 1, No. 6,501, fol. 152a, and Rawlinson MS. B., 400B.

4.9 Rawlinson MS. B., 400B.

4.10 Skelton’s Antiquities of Oxfordshire.

4.11 Beesley’s History of Banbury, p. 78.

4.12 Lay Subsidy Roll, 161/46.

4.13 Beesley’s History of Banbury, p. 188.

4.14 Vincent’s MS., vol. li in College of Arms; his Collections, vol. x, p. 81; and Visitation of Oxon, Harleian publication, vol. v; also Baker’s History of Northamptonshire, vol. i, p. 604.

4.15 Notes of Mr Cobb, which were very kindly lent to us by C. Fortescue, Esq., of Banbury.

4.16 In 1978 Calthorpe House came under threat of demolition. The remnants of the stained glass located in the oriel window were removed, restored and are now on display in Banbury Museum.

4.17 Lay Subsidy Roll, Divers Counties, 238/139.

4.18 Ancient Deeds, vol. ii, B. 3,512, of March 20, 30 Edward III, 1356.

4.19 Dugdale’s History of Warwickshire, vol. i., p. 562.

4.20 Blomfield’s History of Norfolk , vol. x, p. 298.

4.21 Campbell’s Lives of the Lord Chancellors, vol. i, p. 123.

4.22 Fine Rolls, 42 Edward III (1368), m 9.  Also Baker’s History of Northamptonshire vol. i, p. 604.

4.23 Regarding these City Brancestres, cf. the Calendar of the Hustings Rolls, City Record Office, Guildhall, and Calendar of Wills of Hustings Rolls, edited for the Corporation by Reginald R. Sharpe, Esq., D.C.L., London 1889.

4.24 London fine, 112 of 6 Edward II (1312).

4.25 London fine, 170 of 17 Edward III (1343).

4.26 Calendar of Ancient Records vol. i, B. 213.

4.27 No. 181, Augmentation.

4.28 Patent Roll of 16 Richard II (1392), Part ii, m 28.

4.29 Chancery Inquisition, Southampton, 39 Edward III (13645, second numbers, No. 49.

4.30 No. 28 of 43 Edward III (1369).

4.31 See Section 3, Chapter V, of Green’s History of the English People.

4.32 Lay Subsidy Rolls of 18 Richard II (1394) and 2 Henry IV (1400).

4.33 Northampton fine 47, 18 Richard II (1395).

4.34 See also Harleian MSS., 6,148, p. 72b.

4.35 Oxon fine 77 of 22 Richard II (1398).

4.36 He was alive in 1409, for in the Lay Subsidy Roll (155/57), Northampton, 11 Henry IV, are the names of Richard Danvers of Staverton and John Danvers of Byfield.

4.37 Cf. vol. v, Harleian Society’s publications; also Beesley’s History of  Banbury, p. 614; and Baker’s History of Northampton, vol. i, p. 604; also Harleian Roll, p. 10, and Vincent’s pedigree of the family at the Heralds’ College.  Also Aske’s pedigree of Danvers in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica.

4.38 Cf. Beesley’s History of Banbury, pp. 156 and 175.

4.39 Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, Record Office, vol. f., C 1184.

4.40 Oxon fines, 15 of 4 Henry V (1416), and 38 of 7 Henry V (1419); Close Rolls, 4 and 6 Henry V (1416 and 1418).

4.41 Close Roll 18 Henry VI.

4.42 Record Office, Miscellaneous Charters, vol. iv, No. 229 of 35 Edward III.  Charter of Roger de Cottesford of Prestcote to Prior of Chacumbe.

4.43 Oxon fines, 17, 6 Henry V, No. 22 of 5 Henry V; Close Roll 7 Henry V, M. 19.

4.44 See Dugdale’s Baronage.

4.45 Stubbs’ Constitutional History, vol. ii, p. 435.

4.46 Stubbs’ Constitutional History, vol. iii, p. 415.

4.47 Letter from the Very Rev. the Dean of Westminster in The Times of June 5, 1891.

4.48 Parliamentary History, 1421.

4.49 History of the Oxford Colleges, edition of 1786, p. 307.

4.50 Dodsworth MS. No. 22, folio 52.

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