DOBBE, Richard

Dobbe probably descended from a gentry family of this name resident at Chulmleigh in central Devon. His paternity is obscure, as is much of his early career. A probable kinsman, Robert Dobbe, had stood surety for elected Members at two parliamentary elections in Henry V’s reign, and his son, William, served several times as a tax collector in the shire in the early years of Henry VI, but no similar activity is documented for Richard, nor is it clear to what circumstances or connexions he owed his return for Tavistock in 1426.2 C219/12/2, 5; CFR, xvi. 69, 268; xvii. 218. He may have been the Richard Dybbe who appears as a witness to property deeds at Newton Abbot in the early 1430s: Devon RO, Courtenay (Moger) mss, D1508M/Moger/156, 159.

While it is impossible to be certain, it was probably this Richard who by 1436 had entered the household of the precentor of Exeter cathedral, Roger Bolter,3 C47/7/6(1). and who after Bolter’s death transferred into the service of the cathedral treasurer, Michael Archdeacon.4 Reg. Lacy, iv (Canterbury and York Soc. lxiii), 39. His place in the cathedral close gave Dobbe an entry to civic society, and enabled him to forge the connexions that later allowed him to marry Anastasia, the widow of Robert Legh, a minor Exeter merchant. This marriage brought him property in ‘Trinity Leigh’ which Anastasia held in dower from her first husband, but it also embroiled him in litigation with his wife’s erstwhile brother-in-law, Alfred Legh, who claimed that Anastasia had fraudulently availed herself of Robert’s inability to speak during his final illness to settle his property on herself and a few trusted associates in fee simple.5 C1/10/157-9.

Dobbe seems to have remained in Exeter, where in 1452 he successfully sued William Prous in 1452 in the staple court for non-payment for a consignment of beer.6 Sel. Cases Law Merchant (Selden Soc. xlix), 71-72. It is less certain that it was the same man who in the later 1460s (then styled a gentleman of Chulmleigh) was sued by the attainted earl of Devon’s brother Henry Courtenay for a debt of £20.7 CP40/829, rot. 283.