DARCY, Robert II

The Darcys of Essex were supposedly descended from Henry Darcy, a prominent 14th-century London vintner, although Robert’s father and namesake began his career in the north of England. A successful lawyer, the elder Robert numbered prominent members of the aristocracy among his clients, including John, duke of Bedford, Joan Beauchamp, Lady of Abergavenny, the Bourgchier family and Richard, duke of York. He acquired a half-share of the lordship of Maldon (the other lord was the bishop of London) and took up residence in the borough, where he (or possibly the younger MP) began building a large mansion near All Saints church. While never completed, a tower subsequently known as ‘Darcy’s Tower’ was constructed, and it later became Maldon’s moot hall. Through his success as a lawyer, the elder Robert Darcy became ‘a greate Riche man’, enabling him to invest large amounts of money in land. According to one tax assessment, he enjoyed a very substantial income of £366 p.a. by the mid 1430s, much of it in his legal fees as clerk or keeper of the writs in the court of the common pleas, an office he shared with his brother-in-law, Henry Filongley* from October 1440.6 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 750-2; Egerton 3401, f. 5; Essex Archaeology and Hist. xxxi. 148; W.J. Petchey, A Prospect of Maldon, 98; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Essex, 291; H.L. Gray, ‘Incomes from Land’, EHR, xlix. 633. One of Filongley’s sisters, Alice, was Darcy’s second wife and the mother of his children, of whom the MP was the eldest son. Thanks to this match, the Darcys inherited a share of the Filongley estates, situated in the Midlands, following the childless Filongley’s death in the early 1460s.7 CP40/913, rot. 113.

Thanks to his substantial inheritance, Darcy qualified easily for the knighthood he received late in life. His father had secured a good marriage for him, since his wife Elizabeth came from one of the leading gentry families in Essex. Both her grandfather, (Sir) John Tyrell*, and father, Sir Thomas Tyrell, were close friends of the elder Robert Darcy, and the match was just one of several alliances contracted between the two families in the fifteenth century. The MP’s younger brother John was married to Sir Thomas’s daughter Anne; one of his sisters, Margaret, became the wife of the knight’s brother, William Tyrell I*; and another, Eleanor, was matched with Sir Thomas’s eldest son and heir.8 Procs. Suff. Inst. Archaeology, ii. 79; Ric. III, Crown and People ed. Petre, 203, 212-13. Darcy remained on good terms with the Tyrells for the rest of his life. He and Sir Thomas acted as feoffees for each other, and he followed his father’s example in making the knight one of the overseers of his will.9 CAD, i. C1358; Essex Feet of Fines, iv. 54; C148/43; Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15. The Tyrells were not the only connexions Darcy inherited from the elder Robert Darcy, since he was occasionally associated with both Filongley and Joan, Lady Abergavenny’s grandson, James Butler, earl of Wiltshire, in the capacity of a feoffee.10 CPR, 1452-61, p. 150; CCR, 1454-61, p. 213. In the early 1460s, he witnessed a conveyance on behalf of the Bourgchiers,11 L.S. Woodger, ‘Hen. Bourgchier’ (Oxf. Univ. D. Phil. thesis, 1974), 264-5. and Henry Bourgchier, earl of Essex, was one of his own feoffees, and another overseer of his will.12 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 613; Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15.

Darcy was about 19 years of age when his father died in the autumn of 1448. Evidently a young man of some maturity, he was one of those whom Robert named as an executor, and he was technically still a minor when he attested his first parliamentary election a few months later. In his will of April 1448, the elder Robert set aside the income from two manors to support a chantry in the parish church of All Saints Maldon (his burial place), gave away certain properties to Colchester abbey and settled two manors at Tolleshunt on his younger son, John, but he left the rest of his estate to his heir. Apart from his rights of lordship in Maldon, Darcy succeeded to a dozen or more manors at Danbury, Canewdon and elsewhere in Essex, and to his father’s ‘place’ in Sermoners Lane, London.13 C139/136/40; Egerton 3401, ff. 5v-9v. The pardon Darcy received in 1452 referred to him as ‘of London’ as well as Maldon: C67/40, m. 11. His mother did not hold any of his inheritance in dower, so she had almost certainly predeceased the elder Robert. It is likely that Darcy’s wife brought him additional lands when they married, although no details of any such have survived. Over the years, Darcy added to his estate by purchase. His acquisitions included holdings at Tilbury, as well as properties in Southminster and elsewhere that he bought from his brother John. In common with other mid-fifteenth century landlords, the Darcys were largely rentiers and when Robert succeeded his father almost all of his inheritance, save two manors at Maldon and Danbury, was in the hands of farmers. One of the farmers was William Tyrell II* (younger brother of Sir Thomas and William I), who leased a manor at Rawreth, first from the elder Robert and then from Darcy himself.14 CAD, vi. C6513 (2); Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15; SC6/848/14-19.

The elder Robert Darcy had directed his son and other executors (Henry Filongley, William, abbot of Colchester, and Robert Roo, clerk) to ensure that no fewer than 2,000 masses were sung on the day of his funeral. Whether or not they managed to honour this extravagant request, they did establish his chantry at Maldon, having obtained licence to do so from the Crown in December 1449.15 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 312. Darcy and his associates were still performing their duties in early 1453, when they sued the executors of the Maldon merchant, John Swayn*, over a debt of £40,16 CP40/768, rot. 278d. and he later asked his own executors to perform any part of his father’s will which, through his own ‘defaughte’ and ‘slouthe’, was still unfulfilled.17 Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15.

In his will, the elder Robert had expressed his loyalty to the Crown by requiring the chaplains serving his Maldon chantry to pray for the good estate of Henry VI and his queen.18 Ibid. ff. 5v-9v. Within a couple of years of his father’s death, however, there were doubts about Darcy’s own loyalty. In the summer of 1450, he and others from Maldon found it necessary to seek a general pardon, dated 7 July that year, for having participated in an illegal assembly in Essex at the time of Cade’s rebellion.19 CPR, 1446-52, p. 348. Among those indicted for taking part in the rising in that county but subsequently cleared was Darcy’s associate, William Tyrell II.20 CPR, 1446-52, p. 338; KB9/273/26; KB27/772, rex rot. 31d. As far as Darcy was concerned, his late father’s links with the duke of York may have worried the jittery authorities, even though his uncle, Henry Filongley, was a royal servant and would bear arms for the Lancastrian cause a few years later. The rebels of 1450 had demanded that the King should take York into his council and Cade himself had claimed a connexion with the duke. Whatever the case, Darcy rapidly recovered the trust of the government. It placed him on commissions for the county in August and September 1450, including one instructed to arrest and imprison traitors, and he (unless it were a namesake) is listed among the King’s esquires in a household account for 1451-2.21 E101/410/9. He obtained a second royal pardon in November 1452,22 C67/40, m. 11. although it is not possible to prove a connexion with it and the events of 1450.

Although York had not promoted Cade’s rebellion, it had worked to his advantage by shaking a discredited government and giving him the opportunity to intervene in national politics. Following the summoning of the Parliament of 1450-1, he worked to ensure the election to the Commons of men sympathetic to his cause. Darcy gained election as a knight of the shire for Essex, alongside none other than William Tyrell II, although whether with the duke’s active support is impossible to tell.23 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 708, assumes that Darcy gained his seat as a known associate of York, but he confuses the MP with his father. As far as is known, the assembly of 1450 was Darcy’s first and only Parliament. As a newcomer to the Commons, he is likely to have relied on Tyrell for guidance, since his fellow knight of the shire had sat in the two previous Parliaments. Two years after leaving the Commons Darcy was made a j.p. but he did not serve in any other local office until 1458, when he was made a commissioner of array and pricked as sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire. In common with others who served as sheriff, he was excused £180 of his account in recognition of the costs and expenses he had incurred during his term in the shrievalty.24 E159/236, brevia Mich. rot. 2. These offices, along with his appointment in February 1461 to a commission instructed to arrest rebels, indicate that the government was prepared to trust him at a time of deepening crisis. Immediately after Edward IV came to the throne he lost his place on the commission of the peace, but he was no political partisan and his connexions with the Bourgchiers, adherents of the new King, must have helped his cause. Pardoned in March 1462,25 C67/45, m. 30. he was appointed to an ad hoc commission in the following year, restored as a j.p. in November 1464 and knighted at the queen’s coronation in May 1465. His brother John also received a pardon in early 1462,26 C67/45, m. 36. although he later supported Henry VI’s Readeption. He paid the price following the restoration of Edward IV, who granted his manors at Tolleshunt to Richard, duke of Gloucester. Again pardoned in July 1474, John sought the charity of Sir Thomas Tyrell, who put up the money with which he redeemed the confiscated properties.27 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 297, 317-18, 451; PCC 31 Wattys (PROB11/6, ff. 237-41).

Unlike his brother, Darcy did not live long enough to have his loyalties tested by the Readeption and it appears that his last few years were uneventful.28 It is unclear why he felt it necessary to obtain his royal pardon of Dec. 1468: C67/46, m. 16. He received no new appointments after 1463, although he retained a place on the Essex bench until his death on 3 Nov. 1469.29 C140/31/2. In the testamentary section of his will, dated the previous 5 Oct., he sought burial near his father in All Saints Maldon. He ordered a marble tomb for himself and directed his executors to spend £30 on his burial and month’s mind. He left three books, a Bible, ‘Bartilmere de proprietatibus’ and the ‘maister of the Storeyes’ to his father’s chantry in the church. The second of these volumes was De Proprietatibus Rerum, an encyclopedia of theology and science by Bartholomaeus Anglicus and the third was probably a vernacular version of Historia Scholastica, a theological treatise by Peter Comestor, the ‘Master of the Histories’. There is nothing exceptional about his ownership of these works, since both were extremely popular in the Middle Ages, but it suggests that he could have been a man of some learning. Like his father, Darcy requested 2,000 masses for the good of his soul. He also asked for memorial services and prayers from a number of religious houses, including those of the Carthusians at Syon, Middlesex, the Trinitarian friars at Hounslow in the same county and the Franciscans at Colchester, of all of which he was a lay brother. For his executors he chose his wife Elizabeth, his brother-in-law John Clopton (husband of his sister Alice) and two clerics, Nicholas Saxton (whom he had presented to the rectory of Danbury in 1461) and Richard Astele. In addition to the earl of Essex and Sir Thomas Tyrell, he chose John, Lord Dynham, and Sir Thomas Montgomery† to act as his overseers. In return for their trouble, he ordered that Bourgchier and Dynham should each have a butt of malmsey and each of the two knights a pipe of red wine. Dynham was from the West Country but he had recently acquired landed interests in Essex through his marriage and his wife’s manor at Woodham Walter lay near Darcy property at Danbury. Darcy probably chose him as an overseer because he was an influential man with strong connexions to the Yorkist Crown. Montgomery came from a family linked with the Darcys, for his deceased elder brother, John Montgomery*, had married Darcy’s sister, Anne. In the section of his will concerned with his lands Darcy awarded his widow an estate for life in several of his manors and lands in Danbury, Little Baddow, Shopland, Rochford, Southminster and elsewhere, along with his ‘place’ in London. He gave her full control of their children’s upbringing, although he stipulated that she should lose that responsibility if she were to remarry. He allotted to each of his three daughters mentioned in the will 300 marks for her marriage portion. His sons, Thomas and Robert, were still minors and he assigned some of the revenues from his lands to support the latter through school. He left Thomas, his elder son and heir, a gold cup that his own father had given to him, requesting that he should in turn bequeath it to his heir. Darcy also set aside money from the revenues of his estate to provide annuities to those household servants whom he wished to remain in the service of his widow and eldest son. In spite of his ties with Maldon, he instructed his executors to consider selling some of his property in the town and investing the money raised in land elsewhere, if they thought such an option would prove profitable to his heirs. He did however require his executors to found a perpetual chantry in All Saints church, for the benefit of the souls of himself, his wife, his parents and other relatives and all his friends, and make a charitable bequest (also in perpetuity) to Maldon’s poor, stipulating that once a week 12d. should be distributed among a dozen of its neediest inhabitants. A visible reminder of his family’s position in the borough was his tower, in which he ordered his executors to store all the written evidences relating to his estates.30 Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15; M.C. Seymour et al., Bartholomeus Anglicus and his Encyclopedia, 11-13; Bartholomaeus Anglicus on the Properties of Soul and Body ed. Long, 1; Dict. of Middle Ages ed. Strayer, ix. 513-14; CP, iv. 378-9; H. Kleineke, ‘Dinham Fam.’ (Univ. of London Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 42, 246; Essex Rev. ii. 31.

Elizabeth Darcy chose not to remain single, for shortly after the MP’s death she married the Kentish esquire Richard Haute†. In late 1470 or early 1471 she and Haute were sued in Chancery by Robert Harleston (a younger son of John Harleston II*) and his wife Alice. One of the daughters and coheirs of (Sir) Henry Bruyn*, Alice was Darcy’s niece and the suit related to an obligation which he had received on her behalf at the time of her marriage to her first husband John Berners. The purpose of the suit was to secure possession of the obligation from Elizabeth, whom the Harlestons claimed was detaining it from them.31 C1/31/69; Egerton 3401, ff. 5v-9v; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 883-4; ii. 383. Of South Ockendon, Bruyn had married the MP’s sister, another Elizabeth. Even though her second husband was a man of powerful connexions, Elizabeth retained the name of Darcy, presumably because of the prestige associated with being a knight’s widow. It was doubtless through Haute, a cousin of Edward IV’s queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, and a member of the household of her young son, Edward, prince of Wales, that she became mistress of the King’s nursery.32 CPR, 1476-85, p. 241. She became a widow for a second time in 1483, when Richard, duke of Gloucester, had Haute and other members of the prince’s household summarily executed. During Henry VII’s reign, Elizabeth continued to receive a tun of wine from the Crown every year, a gift that Edward IV had bestowed on her for life.33 CPR, 1485-94, p. 256; 1494-1509, p. 5. After her death in 1506, she was buried beside Darcy in Maldon church, where Thomas, the MP’s eldest son and successor, also already lay. Thomas, who had served as an esquire of Edward IV’s household, had died in 1485. Through his marriage, a match contracted for him by the MP, the Darcys came into possession of lands in west Suffolk that had once belonged to the Bardwell family.34 PCC 18 Adean; PCC 24 Logge, 20 Milles (PROB11/7, ff. 183-184v; 11/8, f. 14); CIPM Hen. VII, i. 64, 495; iii. 561; Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. n.s. vi. 49; Egerton 3401, ff. 10-15. The daughter of John Harleston (and gdda. of John Harleston II), Thomas’s wife Margaret was descended from Sir William Bardwell† on her mother’s side of the family.