DOBBE, John

The identification of the man who represented Totnes in the Parliament of 1422 presents some problems, as there were several near namesakes active in Devon at the time.4 These included an Exeter chapman or peddler, otherwise also described as a mercer (CP40/760, rot. 346d; C67/42, m. 26) and a Plymouth yeoman (KB27/751, rot. 19d; 752, rot. 48). It is possible that the MP was in some way related to the Dobbes of Chulmleigh, since at his death in about 1434 Robert Dobbe of Chulmleigh was indebted to John: C131/63/22; C241/227/5. On chronological grounds, the Totnes brewer who married Joan, da. of John Vincent, was probably a younger man, perhaps a son or other descendant of the MP of 1422: C1/402/37-43. On balance, it seems probable that Dobbe, like his parliamentary colleague, the victualler Henry Chesewell*, was a local man. He was a person of some substance, for he regularly paid 3d. or more for the internal levy of Totnes, and was assessed at 8d. for half of a parliamentary fifteenth.5 H.R. Watkin, Totnes Priory and Town, i. 386, 390, 398, 403, 405, 414, 416. A member of the merchant guild of the town, in October 1450 he stood surety for the admission of Walter Ewen.6 Ibid. i. 419. It was probably he who held property at Harbourneford in South Brent to the west of Totnes, and at Easter 1447 was suing a local husbandman there for a debt of 40s., employing the prominent Totnes burgess John Pralle* as his attorney. On the same occasion he also demanded a similar sum from another husbandman, in payment for two oxen which he claimed to have sold to him in 1423.7 CP40/745, rot. 164; CP25(1)/46/85/164. Dobbe is not known to have held office either in Totnes or under the Crown, although he was occasionally empanelled on local juries. This did not mean that he invariably served: in 1440 he was among a number of men empanelled on a jury summoned to Westminster who failed to appear in court and were distrained for their contumacy.8 Watkin, i. 395, 410, 418.

Dobbe’s trade has not been established,9 In 1425 there was a weaver called Dybbe (his Christian name is obscure) living in the town: Watkin, i. 352. and it is just possible that his interests went beyond the boundaries of his town. If so, he may have been the man who by the early 1430s was serving as receiver to Sir John Cornwall, a Bedfordshire landowner who had acquired some of the estates of the Holand earls of Huntingdon and dukes of Exeter through his marriage to Henry IV’s sister Elizabeth, widow of the first duke. Dobbe maintained his connexion with Lord Fanhope (as he became) into the early 1440s when he was joined with him as plaintiff in an action for debt against two husbandmen from Cornwood.10 SC6/822/23; CP40/730, rot. 15.