DIGBY, Everard

‘Dykeby, as far as can be conjectid, cummith by lineal descent owt of the towne of Dikeby, a village in Lincolnshire, wher as yet the heir of the eldest house of the Dikebyes hath a x. li. land by the yere’, so wrote the Tudor antiquary, John Leland, of the origins of the ancient family which our MP headed. He was right to be cautious. Some pedigrees trace the family back to one Aelmar or Almanus, who was recorded in the Domesday Book as the former holder of three carucates in Tilton-on-the-Hill in Leicestershire, but the first certain reference to a Digby resident at Tilton dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century.5 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, ii. 17-18; Leics. Med. Peds. ed. Farnham, 129. There is no satisfactory printed ped. of the Digbys. Unfortunately no longer traceable is a volume of family evidences compiled at the order of Sir Kenelm Digby in 1634 at a cost of as much as £1,200. Although it was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries in 1766, the Leics. antiquary, John Nichols (d.1826), was later refused access to it: Gentleman’s Mag. lxiv. 791; J. Nichols, Leics. iii (1), 463-4n. There is not much to be said of the fourteenth-century history of the family. Sir John Digby (whose tomb still survives in Tilton church) was long active in local administration during the reigns of Edward I and II; Robert Digby, who was probably his son, had his lands temporarily confiscated on a false accusation of supporting Thomas, earl of Lancaster; and another Robert† was the first of the family recorded as sitting in Parliament, representing Leicestershire in 1373. Thereafter, however, there can be few gentry families who had a more colourful story.6 Knights of Edw. I, i (Harl. Soc. lxxx), 285; Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. iii. 134-5.

By the time Everard came into his inheritance on the death of his obscure father sometime during the second decade of the fifteenth century, the Digby patrimony, augmented by the inheritance of his grandmother, Katherine (one of the two daughters of Simon Pakeman†, steward of the honour of Leicester for John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and coheiress of her brother, Simon, who died in 1391),7 Trans. Leics. Arch. Soc. liv. 14-25. comprised lands in four counties. Those in Leicestershire were the most extensive, principally consisting of the manors of Tilton and Billesdon (both held of the Beauchamp earldom of Warwick) in the east of the county, together with lands at Ravenstone and Whitwick in the west. These properties were supplemented by landholdings at Digby in Kesteven, at Eynesbury and Offord Darcy in Huntingdonshire, and at Corley in Warwickshire.8 In the absence of inqs. post mortem for earlier generations of the family, our knowledge of Digby’s lands depends on those taken after his attainder and royal grants of the forfeited lands: C140/1/7; E149/209/7, E153/1154/7; 1880/7; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 153, 177, 354, 486; 1467-77, p. 66. That he held land at Corley is implied by the addition of ‘of Corley’ among his list of aliases in letters of protection in 1443: C76/126, m.14. The Pakemans had held land there: CIPM, xvii. 160; CCR, 1392-6, p. 209. Katherine was alive as late as 1424 and it is unknown how long she kept Everard out of part of an inheritance additionally encumbered by the survival of his mother until about 1440.9 By Sept. 1421 his mother had married John Seyton (d.1430) of Maidwell, Northants. and Seaton, Rutland (Northants. RO, Finch Hatton mss, 2699), and on Seyton’s death she took John Feldyng of Lutterworth as her 3rd husband. She died between May 1438 and Feb. 1441: CPL, viii. 393; Add. Ch. 22274. None the less, he still had sufficient property to be assessed at an income of £40 in the Leicestershire tax returns of 1436.10 E179/192/59.

The first reference to Digby traced in the records reflects no credit upon him. On 16 Oct. 1419, described as ‘of Tilton-on-the-Hill, gentleman’, he was indicted before the Northamptonshire j.p.s for the murder of one John Houghton at Hanging Houghton a month earlier, and this resulted in his outlawry in that county’s court on the following 16 May. By that date, however, he had departed on the King’s service for France: ten days earlier he had mustered at Southampton in the retinue of the Leicestershire knight, Sir William Trussell†. Consequently, on 10 Jan. 1422, he sued a writ out of the court of King’s bench alleging error in the outlawry process. A month later he gained the greater security of a writ to the justices of that court informing them that he was in royal service abroad on the day of his outlawry (for what was termed the manslaughter rather than the murder of Houghton), and ordering them that the outlaw should not be a loser on account of his failure to answer. Five days later he appeared in person in the court, but the case was delayed, first by his return to France in the retinue of John, duke of Bedford, and then by the King’s death. It was not until Easter term 1424, after Digby had again appeared in person in court, that the error was upheld and the outlawry reversed.11 KB27/643, rex rot. 10; E101/49/36, m. 1; CCR, 1419-22, p. 186.

Soon after Digby had put himself back on the right side of the law he made a settlement in favour of the lady who was either already or was about to become his wife. Two fines levied in Trinity term 1425 are clearly part of the marriage settlement. By one the Digbys’ manor of Billesdon and lands in Halstead, which were in the hands of his mother, Joan, and her second husband, John Seyton, were settled on Joan and John for Joan’s life, with remainder to our MP and Elizabeth Hunt and their issue. By the other, Joan and John surrendered their interest in the rest of the Digby inheritance to a group of feoffees headed by our MP’s new father-in-law, Roger Hunt, presumably in preparation for the granting of jointure to the bride.12 The fact that Elizabeth is not described as his wife suggests this may be a pre-nuptial settlement: CP25(1)/126/74/6; 291/65/41. Significantly from the point of view of Digby’s future career, the influential Hunt was, among other things, one of the leading councillors of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk. Before long our MP too numbered himself among the duke’s affinity, and he was lucky that his membership did not prove fatal.13 A much less likely possibility is that he was drawn into the affinity through the fam. of his mother, who were feudal tenants of the Mowbrays, and that his marriage was the product of this already existing connexion with the duke. On 8 Nov. 1428, when the duke was returning along the Thames from a meeting with Cardinal Beaufort, his barge sank and about 16 of his household drowned, but Digby was one of those who survived.14 William of Worcestre, Itins. ed. Harvey, 361; Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English, ed. Stevenson, ii (2), 760.

Digby’s relationship with Hunt and the duke led him to take a more prominent part in the politics of Huntingdonshire than was justified by his modest landholdings there.15 Later evidence suggests his property in the county consisted of only about 200 acres in Eynesbury and Offord Darcy: CPR, 1461-7, p.486. He appeared as an attestor to the county elections of 1425 and 1427, on both of which occasions Hunt was returned,16 C219/13/3, 5. and was drawn into the duke’s dispute there with the belligerent John Holand, earl of Huntingdon.17 For this dispute: J. Amundesham, Chron. S. Albani ed. Riley, i. 25; PPC, iii. 302; J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 17-18n. Archer’s suggestion that there was no such conflict adduces no new evidence and lacks conviction: R.E. Archer, ‘The Mowbrays’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1984), 258-62. On 12 Apr. 1429 he, styled as ‘of Offord Darcy, gentleman’, was indicted on two counts of felonious theft before Huntingdonshire j.p.s, headed by the earl. This indictment is to be seen as another manifestation of the dispute between the two lords: the presentment of Hunt at the same session of the peace leaves no room for doubt on this score. The dispute also gave rise to the contentious and aborted Huntingdonshire election of the following 20 Aug., which led to Hunt’s return at a second election held four weeks later. Significantly, at an election held at Leicester two days before the first Huntingdonshire election, Digby was also returned, an indication perhaps that the Mowbray interest had been effectively mobilized. Whether the duke and earl were able to resolve their differences before the duke’s death in October 1432 is not known, but, whatever the outcome of the dispute, our MP was still left with the problem of the indictment against him. If his later suit is to be believed, Edmund Hungerford of Offord Cluny, clerk, and others had conspired at Uppingham on 1 June 1428 to obtain the indictment, which resulted in his arrest on 3 Feb. 1431. He claimed that he had then been imprisoned in the Marshalsea until acquitted before the justices of assize at St. Neot’s on the following 4 June.18 KB27/708, rot. 65; Archer, 261-2; C219/14/1; Roskell, 18-20. This claim is not to be taken literally: it was a formula common to such actions of conspiracy with ‘imprisonment’ equated with a term under mainprise. In Digby’s case he had personally appeared in the court of King’s bench on the date of his supposed arrest and produced mainpernors for his subsequent appearance. The inclusion among these sureties of the duke of Norfolk’s servant, Edmund Wynter I*, is testimony to the connexion between our MP’s troubles and his service to the duke; and the other three, Sir Richard Hastings*, (Sir) John Culpepper*, and the able lawyer Thomas Palmer* (with whom he was to remain closely associated for the rest of his career) bear witness to his weight in local affairs.19 KB27/679, rex rot. 6. There is only one piece of evidence that Digby’s relationship with the Mowbrays continued after the duke’s death: in Michaelmas term 1439, in company with the new duke and two others, he found security in the large sum of £440 each for the Mowbray retainer, Sir Robert Wingfield*.20 Sel. Cases in Exchequer Chamber (Selden Soc. li), 78 (where the editor mistakenly describes him as Sir Edward Digby); KB27/714, rot. 124d.

Little else is known of Digby’s career in the early 1430s. In 1434 he was named among the Huntingdonshire gentry sworn not to maintain peace-breakers, implying that he continued to make his principal residence in that county. That is not, however, to say that he was not also involved elsewhere. Late in that year, for instance, he was present in the private chapel of Richard Knightley* at Fawsley in Northamptonshire for the clandestine marriage of his cousin, Marina, sister of the wealthy Leicestershire esquire, John Bellers*, to Sir Thomas Green*.21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 375; Lincs. AO, Reg. Gray, ff. 118v-19v. None the less, Huntingdonshire remained the focus of his interests. On 10 Oct. 1438, after he had belatedly sought redress in the court of King’s bench against those who had had him falsely indicted in 1429, a jury of that county awarded him damages of as much as 100 marks.22 KB27/706, rot. 56d; 708, rot. 65. In Hil. term 1441 Digby acknowledged himself satisfied of the damages: KB27/719, att. rot. 2. Ten days later he significantly extended his landed interests there, albeit only temporarily: Agnes, widow of Sir William Porter†, leased to him and his young son, Roger, the manor of Offord Cluny, next to his own property at Offord Darcy, for term of her life at a yearly rent of £28. At about this time his local standing was further enhanced when he found a place in the service of the leading magnate in the county, John, Lord Tiptoft†. At an unknown date Lord John, as King’s keeper of the forests of Weybridge and Sapley, granted him the office of lieutenant in the former in tail-male. This grant presumably predates one made by the Crown on 11 Apr. 1439 by which Digby was appointed to the office of forester of Weybridge and Sapley on the confusing condition ‘that such office has long existed and that nobody is occupying it under letters patent’.23 CIPM, xxvi. 85; CPR, 1436-41, p. 289. This close connexion with Tiptoft endows with an added significance Digby’s return to represent his adopted county in the Parliament of the following November. In neighbouring Cambridgeshire the election to this assembly was seriously disturbed by a dispute between Tiptoft and Sir James Butler to the disadvantage of the former; in marked contrast the return of Digby was an assertion of Tiptoft’s local influence. To be seen in the same light is his nomination, during the course of this Parliament, to the Huntingdonshire bench (an honour never accorded to him in his native Leicestershire).

In the early 1440s Digby played a leading part in three apparently separate but probably related disputes. One of these is said to have led to a very serious disturbance at a session of the peace at Huntingdon. The immediate pretext was a felony indictment taken on 22 July 1440 at a view of frankpledge held at Buckden near Offord Darcy by our MP in his capacity as steward of the bishopric of Lincoln. The indicted man, a yeoman called William Belle, was a tenant of the royal lordship of Higham Ferrers and had many friends, chief among whom was William Calcroft, an esquire of the Household and receiver of the duchy of Lancaster lands in Northamptonshire. If a certificate lodged in the court of King’s bench by Digby and two of his fellow j.p.s. is to be believed, 500 armed men, led by Calcroft, had come to the session of the peace at Huntingdon on 28 Apr. 1441 and threatened to burn the chamber in which the j.p.s. were meeting unless Belle was released to them. The alleged rioters countered by claiming in a petition to the King that Digby was the ‘chief causer of all for twoo dayes before that day he gadered to him diuers people misgouerned to his owen hous and had thaim with him’ at Huntingdon ‘with stuff of armure and other wepyns of werre’. There is little other evidence to put these exchanges into context. But one thing is clear: our MP had an interest in the matter beyond that of a disinterested j.p. At the disturbed session of the peace he had required that Belle find him surety ‘de incendio’ of his houses and it would be entirely consistent with what else is known of his career if he had done something to provoke the alleged riot. This seems to have been the view of the Crown: a writ of privy seal ordered the justices of King’s bench to suspend process on those named in the certificate on the grounds of both their innocence (as manifest in their counter-allegations against Digby) and the fear that the tenants of Higham Ferrers would withdraw from their tenements if they were fined. This is the last heard of the matter, but it was probably the reason for the removal of Digby from the county bench in July 1442.24 KB9/235/20; KB27/721, rex rot. 18.

By this time Digby was involved in what appears to have been another episode in the quarrel between Lord Tiptoft and Butler. This at least is the inference to be drawn from the identity of the opposing party, Henry Brokesby, resident at Butler’s manor of Fulbourne (Cambridgeshire) and scion of a family closely connected with the Butlers. On 22 Feb. 1441 Brokesby was indicted of murder before a group of j.p.s. headed by Sir Nicholas Styuecle*. Brokesby quickly claimed that this charge arose out of a conspiracy between Tiptoft, Styuecle, Digby and many others (said to have taken place at Bromsgrove in the previous November) and, on the following 6 Apr., he was duly acquitted before a special commission of gaol delivery. The legal boot was now on the other foot, particularly after the death of Lord Tiptoft in January 1443 had weakened the chance of a successful defence against Brokesby’s writ of conspiracy. At an assize session at Worcester on the following 18 July a jury awarded costs and damages of 700 marks against our MP and another defendant and 600 marks against Styuecle and others. When, however, the case came back to the court of common pleas, the justices failed to award judgement, because of doubts as to whether, first, the letters of protection Digby had pleaded at the assize session should have been disallowed and, second, the plaintiff had acted lawfully in pursuing two separate actions on the single original writ. Numerous adjournments failed to give the justices time to resolve these difficulties and the unfortunate Brokesby was still vainly awaiting judgement in 1449.25 CP40/727, rot. 600; Year Bk. Hil. 21 Hen. VI, pl. 12, Mich. 22 Hen. VI, pl. 5 (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679).

The third dispute into which Digby was drawn in the early 1440s was probably, from his point of view, the most dangerous. During his short tenure of Offord Cluny, Digby became involved in a dispute with Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin. On 8 Sept. 1441 he allegedly led an assault on a servant of Lord Grey at Brampton near Huntingdon and, if actions sued in the court of common pleas are to be credited, Lord Grey’s servants responded by raiding his property at Offord Cluny in the following August and assaulting and imprisoning one of his men at Huntingdon a few days later. Both sides claimed exaggerated damages – Grey asked for £500 for the assault on his servant and our MP for twice that sum for the raid on his property – but this should not be allowed to disguise the fact that the dispute was a serious one. Digby supplemented his common-law action both by a personal complaint to Henry VI at Sheen and a petition to King and council. As a result, on 8 Oct. 1442 the council ordered Grey to appear before the King ‘in all haste’ and to keep the peace towards Digby on pain of £1,000.26 CP40/728, rots. 88, 442d, 533; E28/90/59; PPC, v. 211. This action seems to have been sufficient to bring the dispute to a conclusion.

In view of these difficulties it is understandable that Digby should have chosen to resume a military career, discontinued more than 20 years before. In April and May 1443 he sued out letters of protection, for the term of a year, as about to depart for France on the ill-starred expedition of John Beaufort, duke of Somerset, and on the following 17 July (the day before damages were awarded against him in the Brokesby case), he was one of those mustered at Portsdown. Somerset’s army remained in the field until late December, but our MP appears to have returned to England in the meantime for he sued out renewed letters of protection on 25 Nov. It is not known whether he took part in the last stage of the campaign.27 DKR, xlviii. 357-8, 360; E101/54/5, m. 1. Once back in England his career could not resume its previous course. The death of his patron, Lord Tiptoft, seems to have marked the beginning of his disentanglement from Huntingdonshire affairs. On 6 Apr. 1443 he surrendered his lease of the manor of Offord Cluny, demising it to a group of feoffees, headed by Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and including in Thomas Palmer and Roger Hunt two of his close associates, for the term of Agnes Porter’s life. In March 1445 these feoffees conveyed it to the two archbishops and others preparatory to the settlement of the manor on Westminster Abbey in the following July to provide for the obit of Henry V. Since Henry V had provided for such a settlement in his will, the Digbys no doubt knew that their lease was likely to be curtailed.28 Westminster Abbey muns. 14169-70, 14177-9. It meant, however, that Everard no longer had sufficient estates in Huntingdonshire to justify a prominent place in its affairs, particularly as he was now without a patron. In these circumstances it is curious that he was again returned to represent the county in the Parliament of 1445, but he put his time at Westminster to good use. On 4 June, the day before the assembly’s second prorogation, he sued out a pardon, as ‘late of Offord Darcy’, for the outlawry he had incurred for his failure to answer a London stockfishmonger for a debt of £9. After the dissolution in 1446 he took the further precaution of suing out a general pardon, styled as ‘of Tilton’. None the less, despite his endorsement by the Huntingdonshire electors, the changed circumstances meant that his influence in the county was bound to decline. The last reference to his active involvement there dates from 14 Jan. 1447, when he attested the county election, although his son, Roger, appears to have continued to reside there for, early in the following year, he was involved in a riotous attack on the property of the abbey of Ramsey at St. Ives.29 CPR, 1436-41, p. 289; 1441-6, p. 307; 1446-52, pp. 378-9; VCH Hunts. ii. 173; C67/39, m. 39; C219/15/4.

By this date Digby’s career had already been given new direction by a lucrative second marriage. His first wife had still been alive as late as May 1441, when the couple received a papal indult to have a portable altar;30 CPL, ix. 231. but by the spring of 1446 he had married one of the two coheiresses of the family of Clerk. There can be little doubt that he owed this marriage to the patronage of William Alnwick, bishop of Lincoln. The former bishop, William Gray (d.1436), had acquired the wardship of the coheiresses on the death of their father in 1435, presumably on grounds of tenure, and granted it to his servant, Richard Thwaytes. Their grandfather, John Clerk, had had different ideas, seizing his grand-daughters and preventing the grant taking effect. The disappointed grantee had petitioned the chancellor for redress, but it is likely that it was John’s death rather than the petition which brought the wardship back into the hands of the new bishop, Alnwick.31. C1/69/232. This was the prelude to a marriage which brought Digby the manors of Stoke Dry and Whissendine in Rutland and occasioned the shift of his interests to that county.32 Some confusion has arisen over the date at which the Digbys acquired an interest in Stoke Dry. According to Nichols and others, an inscription on a tomb slab in the church there, commemorating Richard Digby and his wife, Agnes, dates Richard’s death to 1379 and hence shows that the Digbys had an interest there before the marriage of Everard to the Clerk heiress: Nichols, iii (1), 463. Almost certainly, however, a fourth C has been worn away and Richard in fact died in 1479: F.A. Greenhill, Incised Slabs of Leics. and Rutland, 200. He may have been a yr. son of our MP by the Clerk heiress. In April 1446 he was appointed to the bench there, and on the following 26 Jan. he was present at the county court when he himself, styled as ‘of Whissendine’, was returned. Since he had attested the Huntingdonshire election 12 days before he was here in breach of the statutes governing residence of electors and elected. Soon after he began consolidating his hold on the property of the Clerks. In Hilary term 1448 he acquired by fine over 200 acres of land in Exton, which were settled on himself and his new wife in joint tail-general with remainder to his right heirs. Since the Clerks are known to have held lands in this vill, this fine probably marks an effort by our MP to ensure that, should he die without issue by his new wife, at least part of her family’s inheritance would remain in the hands of the Digbys.33 CP25(1)/192/9/13. A suit in the court of common pleas in the following term shows that he had also taken a much more substantial measure to the same end. In company with Agnes and his son by his first marriage, Roger, he sued a merchant, James Waren of Oakham, on a plea of account as receiver of money for Agnes and her sister Margaret. This action very probably arose out of Waren’s role as one of the executors of John Clerk, and is related to a Chancery suit of about the same date, in which Everard and Roger, as executors of John Clerk’s widow, Elizabeth (d.1447/8), sued her husband’s executors for their refusal to surrender two bonds by which Waren was bound to the Clerks. More importantly for our purposes, the action shows that Margaret had married Roger. Such double marriages were not uncommon, and, when viewed in the context of the settlement of Exton, it is obvious that our MP was firmly determined to keep the Clerk inheritance united in the Digby family.34 CP40/745, rot. 96d; Leics. Med. Peds. 131; C1/16/479. Strangely, both our MP and Roger are styled ‘merchant’ in the common-law plea, but this is the only indication that the family had any mercantile interests.

On 16 Jan. 1449 Digby was again elected to represent his adopted county in Parliament, and it was while he was sitting in the Commons that he acted in a very significant conveyance. On 27 Feb. Richard, duke of York, granted his valuable Rutland manor of Hambleton to a group of feoffees, headed by Bishop Alnwick and including our MP. The feoffees were acting for Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who had agreed to purchase the manor from the financially-pressed duke.35 KB27/752, rot. 32; CP25(1)/192/9/14. R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 704 n.60, wrongly interprets this transaction as implying that Digby was a supporter of York. Although this is the only direct evidence to connect Digby with Cromwell, that lord did later act to protect one of his servants and as umpire in one of his disputes. There may have been more substance to their relationship than the available evidence suggests, particularly in view of our MP’s close relationship with Thomas Palmer. Indeed, in 1445 both Cromwell and Digby acted for the lawyer in an important acquisition of land.36 CP25(1)/126/76/62.

Digby’s sudden rise to prominence in the affairs of a county in which he had previously played no part and his return to represent it in successive Parliaments may have led to resentment among the leading gentry of the shire. Whatever the truth of this, he soon found himself involved in a violent quarrel with one of them, John Chiselden*, the ostensible point of dispute apparently being the parkership of Ridlington, which, if our MP’s version of events is the correct one, Chiselden had granted to Thomas Neel for life, and Neel had alienated that interest to him. If Digby’s testimony is to be believed, on 7 Oct. 1449 Chiselden and his confederates had come to the town of Belton and assaulted Digby’s deputy parker, one John Astelby of Uppingham, yeoman. This offence probably explains why Everard once more sought election to Parliament, and his return at the county court held at Uppingham on 30 Oct. provided him with the opportunity to seek redress in a more effective way than through the common law.37 Chiselden headed the list of six attestors to his rival’s election. Presumably he attended in a vain attempt to prevent it: C219/15/7. By the time he submitted his petition in the spring of 1450, during the last session of the Parliament, Chiselden had given him an even greater reason for complaint. According to the petition, on hearing that Astelby had recovered his health, Chiselden and his servants, on the previous 24 Oct., had broken into the park lodge and took away weapons, including two guns, belonging to him and Digby. Far more seriously, on 2 Mar. 1450, while the petitioner was attending Parliament at Westminster, Chiselden, with a gang of 35 miscreants, came to Stoke Dry, where they shot arrows at his wife, and his ploughmen in the fields, and severely beat one of his servants. Their aim was to abduct Alice, widow of Thomas Bermycher (presumably another of our MP’s servants), to prevent her suing an appeal against those who had murdered her husband on the previous 19 Oct. At the end of April 1450, while Digby was again absent at Parliament, although this time at nearby Leicester, they sought Astelby at Belton and Ridlington with the intention of killing him. Digby concluded his petition with a request for summary action against Chiselden. Astelby had already, through the agency of Lord Cromwell, who had informed the chancellor of the earlier assault, secured a warrant of the peace instructing the sheriff to arrest him, but Chiselden had frustrated its implementation by hiding ‘in places desolate’. To overcome this difficulty, Digby asked for a writ instructing the sheriff to make proclamation at Uppingham and Oakham for the appearance of Chiselden and his confederates in the court of King’s bench at the quindene of Trinity 1450: those who appeared were to find surety of the peace and to answer whatever might be laid against them; those who did not were to be summarily convicted of riot without action at common law. Happily for our MP the Crown was willing to sanction this process, and Chiselden, on his failure to appear, was condemned to pay the plaintiff £260 in damages.38 SC8/105/5244; C1/19/473; KB27/771, rot. 30d. The motive Digby attributed to the raiders of March – to prevent Alice Bermycher suing an appeal against her husband’s murderers – suggests that our MP’s enemies may have included others of standing. Alice herself had already petitioned the Commons – no doubt with our MP’s encouragement – implicating Sir Laurence Berkeley*, his son, Thomas, and Hugh Boyville*, sheriff of Rutland in 1448-9, in the murder of her husband, and in Hilary term 1451 she duly named the two Berkeleys in her appeal. This suggests that the dispute between Chiselden and our MP was part of wider disturbances in the county, as does the fact that Sir Laurence later sued Digby for maintaining Alice’s appeal.39 SC8/96/4800; KB27/759, rot. 38; 766, rex rot. 5d; CP40/769, rot. 380; 771, rot. 322. Moreover, in Michaelmas term 1451, our MP appeared personally in the court of King’s bench to sue Boyville, his elder brother, John*, and many other lesser men for trespass, and was himself sued for an assault on the servants of John Boyville at Stockerston (Leicestershire). Given what is known of Chiselden’s friendly association with the powerful Boyvilles and the citation of Hugh in Alice’s petition, there seems little reason to doubt that this action arose out of their support for Digby’s enemy.40 KB27/762, rot. 9d; 763, rot. 12; CP40/763, rot. 483d.

The dispute between the two men is referred to in the unlikely source of the records of Lincoln’s Inn. Chiselden was admitted to the Inn soon after the presentation of the parliamentary petition against him, but almost immediately was exempted from attendance for three vacations for a reduced fine of 20s. because ‘male vexatus fuit per Dykby’.41 L. Inn Adm. i. 11; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 21. What form this vexation took is unknown, but there is no evidence that the dispute occasioned any further violence and it is doubtful in this context that any significance can be attached to the general pardon Digby sued out in November 1452. Most of what is known of the dispute’s later stages concerns his attempt to secure payment of the damages awarded against his rival. It was no doubt partly to protect himself that, on 22 Feb. 1453, Chiselden sought and secured election to represent Rutland in Parliament.42 C67/40, m.14; C219/16/2. Parliamentary privilege protected him from arrest as legal process for the debt continued against him, and such protection was badly needed. His failure to pay Digby led to the proclamation of outlawry against him in the Rutland county court on 7 June 1453. Five days later, however, he had the satisfaction of exacting some small revenge. He secured the nomination of Digby to the unpopular office of tax collector, an office that could not only prove expensive to its holder but was very rarely held by a man of Digby’s rank. Appointment contained an element of social derogation. Nevertheless, Chiselden’s resort to violence ensured that our MP had the last say in the dispute. On 23 Jan. 1454 the sheriff of Rutland was ordered to arrest Chiselden to stand to right on his outlawry, and it is likely that the price he paid for the reversal of his outlawry was the payment of the damages. The last reference to any fresh litigation arising out of the dispute comes in November 1457, when Chiselden secured a pardon for not appearing in the court of common pleas to answer Digby on a plea of debt for £40. The fact that this plea was sued in Middlesex suggests the possibility that at issue was a broken bond to abide an arbitration agreed to when both parties were at Westminster.43 CPR, 1452-61, p. 376.

This dispute, together with the hostility Digby appears to have generated among a section of the leading Rutland gentry, did not prevent him continuing to play an important part in the county’s affairs. On 29 Oct. 1450 he had been once more elected to represent the county in Parliament, and his fellow Member on this occasion was his close friend, the well-connected Thomas Palmer. The origin of their association lay in their blood relationship, for Palmer was the son of our MP’s paternal aunt, Katherine. This family relationship was recognized in a fine of 1425 by which the Palmers were granted a remainder interest, albeit a distant one, in the Digby manor of Billesdon. From 1431 the two men frequently acted for each other in property and other transactions: for example, in 1442 Digby was one of the feoffees employed by Palmer in his acquisition of the manor of Lubbenham; in May 1443 he nominated Palmer as one of his attorneys while he was absent in France; in January 1450, he was one of the trustees for the marriage settlement of Palmer’s daughter and coheiress-apparent, Katherine; and in November 1452 he called upon the lawyer’s surety for the pleading of a pardon.44 CP25(1)/126/76/56, 62; C76/125, m.11; Leics. RO, Peake mss, DE220/MTD/54; C237/43/95. For other evidence of their association: CCR, 1441-6, pp. 117, 227; E. Acheson, Leics. in 15th Cent. 97.

Digby was also a close friend and kinsman of another MP in the Parliament of 1450, John Bellers, who represented Leicestershire. Indeed, he, together with his son, Roger, and Palmer, stood mainpernors for Bellers’s appearance at the assembly, an undertaking made all the more necessary by the fact that the election had taken place six days after the Parliament had assembled. Earlier, both Digby and Palmer had been feoffees in the Bellers manor of Eye Kettleby; in 1434, as already noted, Digby had been one of those present at the wedding of John’s sister Marina; and, in 1443, John had named our MP as one of his feoffees in the manor of Sawtry Moyne (Huntingdonshire) shortly before they both embarked on the duke of Somerset’s expedition.45 Nichols, ii (1), 243; C76/125, m. 11; HMC Hastings, i. 211-12. Among Digby’s other associates were his mother’s stepson, Thomas Seyton*, for whom, with Bellers and others, he acted as a feoffee from 1441; and William Brokesby, for whom he was a feoffee in 1433. In May 1446 he was one of the many Leicestershire gentry who witnessed a declaration, on behalf of Robert Sherard of Stapleford, that Sherard’s wife had given birth to a daughter who had lived only two hours; and, in October 1448, Sherard nominated him to act as an arbiter on his behalf in a dispute with his late wife’s kinsman, Robert Durant of Barrowden, Rutland.46 Add. Chs. 21838-9, 22274, 22285; Nichols, iii (1), 191; Acheson, 91-92; CP40/755, rot. 446.

If, however, these references show that Digby aroused something other than hostility among some of his neighbours, in the mid 1450s he was drawn into yet another dispute. Unfortunately for his hopes of keeping the Clerk patrimony united in the hands of his family, his son Roger had recently died, without issue by Margaret Clerk, and she had taken as her second husband, Bartholomew, younger son of the Leicestershire esquire, William Villers of Brooksby. Up to this date Digby had enjoyed a harmonious relationship with the Villers family, to whom he was related through his paternal grandmother (the other coheiress of the Pakemans had married William’s great-grandfather). Indeed, in February 1446, Everard had been named as one of William’s feoffees in the Villers part of the Pakeman inheritance.47 HMC Hastings, i. 20-21. But good relations ended when he and Bartholomew could not agree on the division of the more valuable lands of the Clerks. According to an action sued by Digby in the court of King’s bench in Hilary term 1455, on the previous 28 July Bartholomew, together with his father and others, had made a forcible entry into the property in Exton that had been settled by fine in 1448. This alleged entry was a symptom of a wider dispute for, again if an action by our MP is to be credited, on 4 Dec. 1454, he and Bartholomew put their title to the Clerk inheritance to the arbitration of John Bellers, Thomas Palmer, Thomas Assheby of Lubbesthorpe in Leicestershire and Simon Hareby, with Lord Cromwell as the umpire. Given what is known of the associations of the two principal arbiters, it is likely that Palmer was named on behalf of our MP, and that Bellers, despite his friendship with Digby, was acting for Bartholomew, who was his sister’s son. It is not known what award was returned, but it is likely to have favoured Digby for, in Trinity term 1456, he sued Bartholomew for failure to abide by its terms.48 CP40/782, rot. 61; 789, rot. 109.

In the late summer of 1457 Digby was among an influential group, several of whom were connected to lords committed to the militant Lancastrian regime, who acted for William Feldyng*, another committed Lancastrian, on the marriage of his daughter to Edmund, son and heir-apparent of Richard Verney. His family connection with Feldyng through his late mother explains his presence among this group, although, given what is known of the last years of his career, there can be no doubt that he shared Feldyng’s political sympathies. Later in the same year he offered mainprise in the King’s bench for those implicated in the murder of Roland, brother of Walter Blount*. In view of Blount’s strong Yorkist affiliations, this again may be evidence of Digby’s Lancastrian leanings.49 KB27/786, rex rot. 28d. None the less, there is nothing in his earlier career to explain the obvious strength of his commitment to Henry VI’s cause. He had no gains from royal patronage to defend, no Lancastrian lord to follow and no apparent need to gamble all on the outcome of the civil war of 1459-61. All that can be said is that his career shows him to have been the sort of character predisposed to commit himself irrevocably to one side or another. The strength of his commitment cannot be doubted. On 25 Oct. 1459 he successfully sought election to the Coventry Parliament, and shortly before Parliament met he was pricked as sheriff for the first time in a long and busy career. On the day after the assembly ended, he was not surprisingly appointed to the Rutland commission of array. Three months later, on 27 Mar. 1460, he gained a small reward for his loyalty: with Peter Idle and Philip Nele, he shared a grant of the keeping of the manors of Holywell in Castle Bytham (Lincolnshire) and Stretton (Rutland) for seven years at a favourable annual rent of £13 10s. That this grant was superseded on the following day, when the lands were farmed out at a rent of a shilling more, did not affect his loyalty. He took an active role in the events of the following summer. According to a later plea, on 11 June 1460 he was among a group of prominent Lancastrians who broke into the property of the Yorkist Sir Robert Harcourt* at Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire and imprisoned him for seven weeks, so preventing him from joining the Yorkist earls on the march that was to end in the battle of Northampton.50 This incident is known only from a civil action sued by Harcourt: KB27/798, rot. 63; CP40/808, rot. 355. What, if any, part our MP took in this battle is unknown, but soon after he may have been among the Lancastrian loyalists defending the Tower of London. His name appears among those on bills of indictment presented to London juries on 23 July, but has been struck out.51 KB9/75/2-7.

On 6 Sept. 1460 Digby as sheriff conducted the Rutland election to the Yorkist assembly which followed the battle, yet, unsurprisingly, he was unable to reconcile himself to the new regime.52 C219/16/5, 6; B.P. Wolffe, R. Demesne in English Hist. 266. On 2 Nov., two days after the succession to the Crown had been settled on the duke of York, he allegedly plotted with 100 others at Westminster to murder him and other Yorkist lords. On 14 Nov. a Middlesex jury at Westminster endorsed this indictment as a true bill, and on his failure to answer in the court of King’s bench a writ of outlawry was issued against him.53 KB9/941/87; KB27/798, rex rot. 44. Digby is erroneously said to have rioted in favour of York in P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 215-16. It may be this that caused him to be exempted from the pardon issued after Edward IV had assumed the throne, but this exemption also implies that he had been present at the battle of Wakefield. He was certainly in arms under the banner of Lancaster at the decisive battle of Towton. ‘At Palmesunday feld Digeby the best of that stok namid Everard, as I remembre, was slayne civili bello’, wrote Leland, and this is confirmed by contemporary evidence. An inquisition into his property gives his date of death as 30 Mar. 1461, the day after the battle, and, if this is accurate, he must have died of wounds received. Not until 1 Sept. was a writ of diem clausit extremum issued in respect of his estates. In the first Parliament of the new reign he was attainted and his estates declared forfeit.54 E149/209/7; PROME, xiii. 42-44, 49-51. An unlikely family tradition has it that three of Everard’s brothers were also killed at Towton: W. Dugdale, Warws. ii. 1013 (his source appears to have been the volume cited in note 5 above). According to an inquisition taken as late as 1464 our MP had, before Edward IV’s accession, conveyed his lands in Donington le Heath, Ravenstone and Whitwick to his two friends, Bellers and Palmer, and three other lesser men, but this finding did not result in the recovery of these lands from the royal grantees.55 CFR, xx. 3; CPR, 1461-7, pp. 177, 354; E153/1880/7.

The division of Digby’s property among supporters of the new regime meant that the immediate prospects of his young son and heir, another Everard (1449-1509), were bleak. On 20 Feb. 1462 the family’s caput honoris, the manor of Tilton, was granted to Walter Devereux II* (now Lord Ferrers of Chartley) in tail-male, and in 1466 this grant was expanded to one in tail-general and supplemented with the family’s lands in Billesdon, Halstead, Offord Darcy and Eynesbury.56 CPR, 1461-7, pp. 153, 486. For grants of his other estates to lesser individuals: ibid. pp. 177, 354; 1467-77, p. 66; PROME, xiii. 300. Nevertheless, the young Everard was able to win the favour of the new King, accompanying him into exile in 1470, ‘where that he myght have enjoyed his lyvelode and goodes, if he wold have relinquyst and departed fro youre moost noble persone’. This loyalty was rewarded with the reversal of his father’s attainder in 1472,57 PROME, xiv. 51-52. and the family’s subsequent rise to prominence is remarkable. In this, Everard was eclipsed by his younger brothers, Simon and John, both of whom had found places in the royal service by the late 1470s. The deposition of Richard III was the prelude to rapid advancement. According to Leland, as many as six sons of our MP fought for the victorious Henry Tudor at the battle of Bosworth, and there is no reason to doubt him for he appears to have been well informed about the history of the family.58 Leland, ii. 18. Everard’s feoffees in 1506 included his five brothers and three of their sons: E150/1117/8. At any event, Simon and John benefited greatly from Henry VII’s patronage as too, although to a lesser extent, did Everard. Strikingly, between the three of them, they served as many as six terms as sheriff during the reign, both John and Everard being appointed in the immediate aftermath of the battle. John, knighted at the battle of Stoke in 1487, became marshal of the Household, and another brother, Thomas, also found a place in the Household. But of greater long term significance was Simon’s career. He rose to be deputy constable of the Tower of London, and on the attainder of Sir Simon Mountfort† in 1495 was granted the Warwickshire manor of Coleshill. There he established a family that later secured promotion to the higher ranks of the peerage.59 For the distinguished later history of the Coleshill branch: CP, ii. 319-22; iv. 353-7; VCH Warws. iv. 51-52. Less well blessed were the senior branch of the family. Our MP’s direct descendant, Sir Everard, was executed for his part in the Gunpowder Plot, although his learned son, Sir Kenelm (d.1665) restored the family’s fortunes.60 For the interesting later history of the Tilton branch: Nichols, iii (1), 463-8; G. Lipscomb, Bucks. iv. 147-51.