DAVY, William

The name of this MP was by no means uncommon in fifteenth-century Dorset.1 For instance, a William Davy (b.c.1355) had been a juror in 1403 at the proof of age of Robert, Lord Poynings, having been retained for life by Lord Robert’s father in 1381 at Okeford Fitzpaine in the north of the county: CIPM, xviii. 990. For the prolific Davys of Okeford and ‘Stikelane’, who in the early 1470s included at least three Williams, see CP40/844, rots. 218, 331, a suit in which Richard Tourges* falsely claimed they were bondmen on his manor of Melcombe Bingham in central Dorset. It may be the case that the MP for Melcombe Regis was he who had been a juror at the inquisition post mortem held at Hooke in west Dorset following the death of Edmund, earl of March, on 10 Jan. 1426. This was just a few weeks before Parliament was due to assemble at Leicester on 18 Feb. The earl had held valuable estates close to Melcombe, at Wyke Regis, on the Isle of Portland and at Weymouth,2 CIPM, xxii. 486, 488. but no evidence has been found to connect Davy with their administration. Shortly before Michaelmas 1430 an inquiry was conducted at Melcombe, where royal commissioners heard evidence that the borough was unable to pay its fee farm and parliamentary subsidies to the Crown owing to past natural disasters and destruction by fire. A William Davy ‘of Newton’ served on the jury, and is quite likely to have been the former MP, but which of the many places called Newton or Newtown was his home is now impossible to tell.3 E143/25/1. Perhaps it was Maiden Newton, for a merchant named John Davy of that place occasionally shipped wool from Melcombe.4 E143/24/1. He was accused of smuggling in 1441.

It is possible that the MP was related to the same or another John Davy, who having been appointed one of the coroners of Dorset in January 1432 was nevertheless dismissed as insufficiently qualified ten months later.5 C242/10/17; CCR, 1429-35, p. 195. John had been a mainpernor for all those returned from Dorset to the Parliament of 1420.