DANBIE (DANBY, DANBYE), Thomas (1610-60), of Leighton, Masham, and Thorpe Perrow, Well, Yorks.

The Danbys (whose name is rendered differently from the form adopted by our MP) had acquired an extensive estate in Yorkshire – including the manors of Farnley in the West Riding and of Masham and Thorpe Perrow in the North Riding – through advantageous marriages in the mid-fifteenth and early sixteenth century.41Sig. SP23/77, pp. 320, 329; Fisher, Mashamshire, 253; VCH N. Riding, i. 325, 351; Cliffe, Yorks. 369-70; Oxford DNB, ‘Danby fam.’. Their strong proprietorial interest in certain parts of the county had not translated readily into parliamentary seats, however, for Danbie’s great-great-grandfather had been the only member of the family to serve as an MP, representing Yorkshire in 1554.42HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Sir Christopher Danby’. The Danbys’ principal residence, or at least their largest single property, was at Farnley, a few miles to the south-west of Leeds – an estate that allowed Danbie to wield considerable influence in the parish of Leeds before the civil war.43C3/408/74. However, the bulk of their property lay in ‘Mashamshire’ in Wensleydale, about ten miles south of Richmond. Danbie’s inheritance, although sizeable, would have been larger still had it not been for the irresponsible behaviour of his mother, who had committed the family’s affairs to a corrupt steward, forcing Danbie’s father, Christopher Danby, to mortgage or sell some of his properties. He died in 1624 an outlaw and a bankrupt, with debts of £1,500.44WARD 9/565; Cliffe, Yorks. 370; Whone, ‘Christopher Danby’, 1-28; Oxford DNB, ‘Danby fam.’.

A more long term threat to the integrity of the Danbys’ estate was the family’s lingering adherence to Catholicism. Both Danbie’s parents were recusants and several cadet branches of the family in Mashamshire were Catholic.45H. Aveling, Northern Catholics: the Catholic Recusants of the N. Riding of Yorks. 1558-1790, 264; Cliffe, Yorks. 186; Whone, ‘Christopher Danby’, 2, 17, 22; Oxford DNB, ‘Danby fam.’. Nevertheless, Christopher Danby seems to have conformed in later life, and it is significant that he entrusted his son’s schooling to a Protestant clergyman – William Greene, vicar of South Kirkby, near Barnsley. After Christopher Danby’s death, one of his servants claimed that his master had been eager that his cousins Sir Thomas Wentworth† (the future earl of Strafford) and Michael Wentworth (father of Sir George Wentworth II*) should have the government and education of Thomas, whom he wished to keep out of the clutches of his estranged wife and her friends.46WARD 9/565. Following a fierce custody dispute between the friends of Danbie’s mother (who were mostly Catholic) and those of his deceased father, his wardship was assigned to the staunchly Protestant Christopher Wandesford†, who had been prevailed upon by his friend and patron Sir Thomas Wentworth to assume the duties of guardian.47WARD9/207, ff. 73, 212; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P21/29; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), undated mss.: Wandesford to Danbie; Strafforde Letters, i. 29; T. Comber, Mems. of the Life and Death of...Lord Deputy Wandesforde (1778), 45-6; Cliffe, Yorks. 130-1, 186.

In order to educate Danbie in the Protestant religion, Wandesford sent him to St John’s College, Cambridge, and placed him under the tutelage of a ‘strict puritan’. Nevertheless, when examined concerning his ‘religion and manners’ by the council of the north in 1627, Danbie was ignorant of the number, let alone the content, of the Thirty Nine Articles.48Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16c: Wandesford to George Radcliffe, 23 Aug. [1627]; Wentworth Pprs. 1597-1628 ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xii), 277. Wandesford considerably improved his ward’s estate – clearing it of several debts and annuities – although in performing his trust as a dutiful guardian he evidently had one eye on securing Danbie as a husband for his daughter, Katherine.49Cliffe, Yorks. 370; Oxford DNB, ‘Danby fam.’. Danbie, however, had different ideas and in 1628 paid court to a daughter of the leading North Riding Catholic, Thomas Belasyse†, Lord Fauconberg (father of Henry Belasyse* and John Belasyse*) of Newburgh Priory. Wandesford tried to prevent the marriage, quarrelled with Fauconberg and then contracted with another man for his daughter’s hand.50Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16c: Wandesford to Wentworth, 13 Nov. 1628; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), undated mss: Wandesford to Danbie. In the event, Danbie decided against Fauconberg’s daughter and in July 1630, despite ‘fresh solicits’ from his lordship, married Katherine Wandesford.51Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16c: Wandesford to Wentworth, 10 Aug. 1630; Comber, Lord Deputy Wandesforde, 59-60.

The quarrel between Wandesford and Fauconberg over Danbie’s marriage was one of the main causes of the much more serious feud that was to develop between Wentworth and Fauconberg after the former’s elevation as president of the council of the north in 1628.52Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16c: Wandesford to Wentworth, 23 Sept. [1630]; Cliffe, Yorks. 297-8. Late in 1632, with Wandesford due to accompany Wentworth on his journey to Ireland as lord deputy, Danbie agreed to take up residence at the King’s Manor, York – the headquarters of the council of the north – with Wandesford’s brother-in-law and vice-president of the council, Sir Edward Osborne*. Wandesford hoped this arrangement would ‘free him from the vanity of the worse company’ – his ‘disorderly’ (as Wandesford thought them) friends at Richmond and ‘sluttish’ companions at Farnley. It seems likely that these were thinly-disguised phrases for people whom Wandesford regarded as suspect in religion. And although there is no evidence for the claim that Danbie was a church-papist, it was apparently insinuated at court in 1633 that he had Catholic leanings.53N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Sir Arthur Ingram* to Danbie, 20 Nay 1633; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 497. Wandesford was still striving to keep Danbie away from his friends in the West Riding in 1636, although to little purpose.54N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 5 July 1636. During the early 1630s, Danbie appears to have divided his time between York, his house at Richmond and either Leighton or Thorpe Perrow or both.55Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16c: Wandesford to Wentworth, 1 Dec. 1632; N. Yorks. ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 6 Mar. 1633; Danbie to his wife, Nov. 1634; C54/2970/17; C54/3011/15; C54/3160/31; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 202. However, he began building up his estate in the West Riding in 1636, and in 1635 and 1638 he was described as being of Farnley.56C54/3047/21; C54/3159/4; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 5 July 1636.

Danbie clearly profited from his association with Wentworth, although not as much as he desired or could reasonably have expected, given his kinship with the lord deputy. On travelling to Ireland in 1633 he was knighted by Wentworth.57Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 202. And he received a further mark of Wentworth’s favour in 1635, when he was appointed a deputy lieutenant for the North Riding.58N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): dep. lt. commission to Danbie, 7 Apr. 1635. But Wentworth fobbed off Danbie’s request for a place on the council of the north by observing that ‘a little time spent at York will both justify the act the better in itself and ... satisfy some others who might expect the same favour if it were done at this time’.59N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 6 Mar. 1633. Wentworth was also very slow in gratifying Danbie’s desire for a colonelcy in the Yorkshire militia.60N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 5 July 1636. Danbie certainly never stood as high in Wentworth’s regard and trust as did his near contemporary Sir William Pennyman*. Only two of Danbie’s letters are preserved among Wentworth’s papers, and neither is couched in terms which suggest any great intimacy between the two men.61Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16/153, 19/111.

Wentworth’s ‘want of regarding’ his cousin may partly explain why Danbie’s contacts at court do not appear to have rivalled those of Pennyman, although in terms of wealth and lineage, Danbie was undoubtedly his superior.62Infra, ‘Sir William Pennyman’; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Danbie to his wife, Nov. 1634, 5 July [1640]. Moreover, none of those who stood godparents to Danbie’s children were figures of any great significance in the Caroline state (except Wentworth, that is), being mostly either his relations or his friends in Yorkshire – among them, the wives of Major Norton* (Danbie’s brother-in-law), Osborne and Pennyman.63N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), undated mss: list of Danbie’s children. But perhaps his closest friend among the Yorkshire gentry was Wentworth’s often-estranged nephew – and, at times, his most prominent opponent in Yorkshire – Sir William Savile*.64Infra, ‘Sir William Savile’; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Savile to Danbie, 5 Sept. 1635; Notts. RO, DD/SR/9/89/1-2. Danbie spent so much time at Savile’s residence in Thornhill, in the West Riding, that one of the house’s rooms was known as ‘Sir Thomas Danby’s chamber’.65Notts. RO, DD/SR/215/50 (Inventory of Sir William Savile). In his will, dated July 1642, Savile left Danbie £20 and a horse.66Borthwick, Wills in York Registry, Prerogative wills, Jan. 1644, will of Sir William Savile, bt. And despite his ties to Wentworth, Danbie appears to have remained on friendly terms with the lord deputy’s Yorkshire opponents the Belasyses – which may help to explain Wentworth’s failure to show him greater regard. In 1633, at the height of the feud between Wentworth and the Belasyses, Lord Fauconberg and Henry Belasyse wrote to Danbie, declaring themselves ‘exceeding much beholding’ to him for his ‘fair dealing’ with them (in 1635, John Belasyse promised Danbie a ‘kind welcome’ at Newburgh).67N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Sir Arthur Ingram to Danbie, 20 May 1633; John Belasyse to Danbie, 3 Apr. 1635.

Danbie would have fallen further in Wentworth’s estimation by quarrelling in the mid-1630s with Wandesford, whom he felt had cheated him of the full amount he had been promised as Katherine’s portion.68C8/52/15; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 18 Aug. 1634, 26 June 1637; same to Katherine Danbie, 20 Oct. 1637; undated mss: Wandesford to Danbie. Their relations became even more strained in 1637, when it was rumoured that Danbie’s appointment as sheriff of Yorkshire was contrived by Wandesford and Wentworth in order to ‘break his back’ – an accusation that Wandesford denied.69N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Katherine Danbie, 14 May 1638. Perhaps anxious to make a good impression on Wentworth, Danbie was a zealous ship-money sheriff – receiving encouragement in this work from Savile and earning the resentment of Sir Charles Egerton* and doubtless many others besides.70Add. 6672, f. 222; E134/1652/MICH12; E134/1656/EAST20; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): undated mss: Thomas Danby of Cave to Danbie. Yet despite his ‘extraordinary pains and expenses’ in the king’s service, Danbie was unable to collect the full £12,000 charged upon the county, whereupon the privy council sent him several peremptory letters, demanding that he bring in £1,237 in arrears.71SP17/F, f. 9; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): privy council to Danbie, 28 Oct., 30 Nov. 1639; Cliffe, Yorks. 253. In the council’s view, the arrears had been ‘occasioned chiefly’ by Danbie’s

negligence and remissness in executing his Majesty’s writ ... according to the letters and instructions of this board. And we cannot but let you know, that considering the importance of the service and the great trust reposed in you by his Majesty for the advancement thereof, you have, by your negligence and failing in the performance, justly incurred his majesty’s displeasure.72N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): privy council to Danbie, 28 Oct. 1638.

Danbie’s insistence that ‘many in the year 1638 refused to pay’, and that he and his collectors had often been violently resisted, failed to impress the council, and he was eventually forced to pay the £1,237 in arrears out of his own pocket, ‘to his great damage’.73N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), mss for 1638-9: note of Danbie’s difficulties in collecting Ship Money; Cliffe, Yorks. 253, 309.

In January 1639, following a royal order that the county’s trained bands muster for possible deployment against the Scots, Danbie signed a petition to the king from the Yorkshire deputy lieutenants and militia commanders, expressing their readiness to march to any rendezvous, but reminding Charles that their troops were ‘never ... once employed out of our county upon any remote service whatsoever’.74Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 353-4. In a less disinterested vein, Danbie exploited the king’s military preparations in the north in an attempt to undermine Wentworth’s authority in Yorkshire and, in the process, to advance his own career. ‘So awake have some been upon me’, wrote Wentworth to Sir John Hotham* in March 1639, ‘as to spy and inform the absence of the poor master of the rolls [Wandesford] from his colonelship [in the Yorkshire militia] as a great disservice to his Majesty and neglect of mine; and certainly I fear this rests betwixt my nephew [Savile] and cousin Danby, and so those of our own house appear against us’.75Strafforde Letters, ii. 308-9. Danbie’s principal motive in joining Savile against Wentworth was apparently to embarrass Wandesford, and it proved a shrewd tactic. Wandesford worked hard to accommodate his son-in-law during 1639;76N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 25 Mar. 1639; indenture dated 21 Apr. 1639. and in September he advised Danbie on how to deport himself towards the lord deputy on the latter’s return from Ireland:

express yourself clearly to his lordship how sensible you are of his want of regarding you in such a manner as his lordship does others of near relation to him; how willingly you would do anything which might obtain his favour ...[and] submit yourself to the observations he makes...rather than to stand upon your own justification, for that never prevails with his lordship.77N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 12 Sept. 1639.

Early in 1640, Wandesford handed over the command of his militia regiment to Danbie, so that (as he explained to Danbie’s wife), ‘the world might see he [Danbie] stood right in my lord’s [Wentworth’s] favour and opinion and that my lord was ready to esteem and regard him as his kinsman ... I procured this to be done for my son ... as a thing which he much desired’.78N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 28 Apr. 1640; same to Katherine Danbie, 25 May 1640. At last, it seems, Danbie had managed to make a good impression on Wentworth (now the earl of Strafford), and in April, Wandesford thanked Strafford and his brother Sir George Wentworth I* for their ‘good affection’ towards his son-in-law.79N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Danbie, 28 Apr. 1640.

True to Wandesford’s new-found confidence in him, Danbie disdained to join the ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry during the summer of 1640, signing only the last of their three petitions to the king and then retracting his signature after Strafford objected to a clause requesting that Charles summon Parliament.80Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland Ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 621; Procs. LP iii. 450-1. Danbie’s was one of two Yorkshire militia regiments – the other being Pennyman’s – that the king and Strafford ordered to remain in the field after mid-September to guard against possible Scottish incursions into Yorkshire.81Infra, ‘Sir William Pennyman’; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 606, 608-9, 623. Danbie’s regiment guarded the border with County Durham in Richmondshire, while Pennyman’s defended the line of the River Tees.82Procs. LP iii. 438 The deployment of these two regiments violated if not the terms at least the spirit of the treaty with the Scots at Ripon. Moreover, the regiments were maintained by levies (authorised by Strafford) that were widely regarded as illegal.83Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 600.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Danbie was returned for Richmond, along with Sir William Pennyman. Although Danbie owned a house in Richmond and estates in nearby Mashamshire, it is likely that both he and Pennyman owed their election largely to Wandesford, who was the borough’s principal electoral patron.84Supra, ‘Richmond’. Like most of the Yorkshire Straffordians, Danbie kept a low profile at Westminster. He received no committee appointments in the Long Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate on the floor of the Commons. His name was not mentioned in the Journal until 4 February 1641, when the House received a petition, accusing him of having had two men in his regiment executed ‘maliciously’ the previous summer for demanding their arrears of pay. The warrant for their court-martial was issued by Strafford, but was said to have been procured by Danbie.85CJ ii. 79a; D’Ewes (N), 326, 329; Procs. LP ii. 362, 366. Attending the House the next day (5 Feb.), as ordered, Danbie asked for a copy of the petition and for time to respond to the allegations against him. This provoked ‘great debate’, with some MPs urging that he should answer the petition immediately and others arguing that he should be given further time to reply, ‘because as the charge stood ... it seemed no less than capital’. In the end, the whole matter was referred to the committee the House had set up to prepare charges against Strafford.86CJ ii. 79b; D’Ewes (N), 329; Procs. LP ii. 374. The matter was still unresolved on 7 April, when Danbie was a witness for the defence at Strafford’s trial, giving evidence on the 27th article – that the earl had levied an illegal tax upon Yorkshire for the maintenance of the trained bands. Corroborating the testimony of Osborne, Pennyman, Savile and other Yorkshire Straffordians, Danbie claimed that the Yorkshire gentry had willingly conceded to the earl’s request for a levy to maintain the trained bands and that the money had been paid ‘with a great deal of cheerfulness’.87LJ iv. 210a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 622; Procs. LP iii. 413, 433-4, 443, 444, 450-1. When he was then questioned about the execution of militia-men for mutinying over pay, he refused to answer on the grounds that he himself was under investigation for ‘hanging men by martial law’.88Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 622-3. On 21 April, Danbie and Pennyman were among only seven Yorkshire MPs who voted against the bill for Strafford’s attainder.89Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. Danbie took the Protestation on 7 May, and on 21 July he was granted leave of absence – after which he appears to have abandoned his seat altogether.90CJ ii. 137a, 217a.

Danbie had apparently joined the king at York by the end of March 1642, when the Commons voted that he and several other ‘suspicious men’ – namely, Pennyman, Savile and William Malory* – be summoned to attend the service of the House.91CJ ii. 503a, 515a; HMC Cowper, ii. 311; HMC Buccleuch, i. 295. Danbie ignored this summons, and in June he was appointed to the Yorkshire commission of array.92Northants. RO, FH133. On 6 September, the Commons disabled him from sitting for neglecting the service of the House and for signing a recent petition to Parliament from the Yorkshire royalists, protesting at Sir John Hotham’s proceedings as governor of Hull.93CJ ii. 754b; LJ v. 273b-274a. He fought, or at least was present, at the battle of Edgehill in October, when he was described as a lieutenant-colonel of foot.94Young, Edgehill, 174.

But though it was claimed after the war that Danbie had been ‘one of the first that entered into arms with the king’, there is little to suggest that he was an active or influential figure among the Yorkshire royalists.95N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), mss for 1641-6: certificate of the sequestration cttee. at York to the CC, c.1646. He played no part in the negotiations that brought the earl of Newcastle and his royalist forces into Yorkshire late in 1642, and nor does he appear to have held any command in the earl’s army. Nevertheless, he was regarded with suspicion by the Yorkshire parliamentarians – Egerton would later accuse him of having raised forces for the king in the West Riding – for early in January 1643 he was captured by troops under Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and imprisoned at Manchester.96CJ iii. 203b; SP23/1, p. 99; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Danbie to Marmaduke Danby, 14 June 1643. In June 1643, he wrote to one of his servants in Yorkshire, requesting that he negotiate with Thomas Stockdale*, Lord Fairfax’s man-of-business, for his release:

It seems ... that Mr Stockdale hath a sequestration of...Farnley towards the reparation of his great damage[s] done by the earl of Newcastle’s army, of which I never was, nor ever did I directly or indirectly, privately or openly, injure any. Yet since it is that my estate is disposed of, I am happy in falling into his [Stockdale’s] hands and shall not only treat with him for it but likewise be a suitor that he would procure my freedom ... and to that end I would have you to attend him, for now I am upon the 23[rd] week of a tedious and chargeable imprisonment.97N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Danbie to Marmaduke Danby, 14 June 1643.

Brought down to London with other royalist prisoners that summer, Danbie escaped and made his way back to Yorkshire.98Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 26 (11-18 July 1643), 206 (E.61.1); CJ iii. 203b. He was among those listed as absent on the king’s service in the Oxford Parliament’s letter to the earl of Essex in January 1644, urging him to compose a peace.99Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. Danbie was among the Yorkshire royalists who wrote to Prince Rupert that spring, imploring him to come to the county’s defence against the Fairfaxes and the Scots.100Add. 18981, ff. 121r-v. However, at some point that spring or summer, Danbie took refuge with his family in Middleham Castle, near Richmond.101Autobiog. of Alice Thornton ed. Jackson, 48. And in August – a month after the royalist defeat at Marston Moor – he surrendered himself to the parliamentarian forces, and from that point onwards he ‘demeaned himself well and conformably to the ordinance of Parliament’.102N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), mss for 1641-6: certificate of the sequestration cttee. at York, c.1646.

Having petitioned to compound in November 1645, Danbie was classed as a delinquent who had borne arms against Parliament.103SP23/77, p. 329; CCC 1014. His estate, although large, was heavily encumbered with debt – of which the largest, of £5,000, had been contracted in 1638 to the earl of Kingston (and since passed on to the earl’s son, Francis Pierrepont*), to whom Danbie had mortgaged ‘the greater part of his lands in the North Riding’.104C7/277/44; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), mss for 1641-6: petition of Danbie, 29 Nov. 1645. His fine was set at £4,780 – a sum that he had great difficulty in finding.105SP23/227, p. 628; CCC 1014. Early in 1648, Pierrepont wrote to Danbie, offering ‘all the service in my power in your business at Goldsmith’s Hall’ and signing himself ‘Your affectionate kinsman’.106N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Pierrepont to Danbie, 20 Feb. 1648. However, it was not until November 1650, after Pierrepont had obtained an order sequestering Danbie’s rents for his own use, that Danbie paid off his fine in full.107SP23/77, p. 323; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), mss for 1647-53; CCC 1015.

Between 1645 and his death in 1660, Danbie avoided all public and political engagements, living quietly in Yorkshire or at his house in Clerkenwell.108N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): mss for 1647-53, 1654. Most of his time was probably occupied with managing his extensive estate, which by 1653 included a £500 share in a Virginia plantation. However, this ‘adventure’ had apparently lost Danbie ‘a vast sum of monies’ by 1654.109N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Phillip Mallory to Danbie, 10 July 1653; same to same, 14 Feb. 1654; pprs. rel. to Virginia (mic. 2281). His financial situation worsened late in 1655, when he learnt that he would be liable to pay the decimation tax. His ‘faithful friend’ Martin Lister* was prevailed upon to put the family’s case to the militia commissioners, but whether his intervention was of any benefit is not known.110N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): Stephen Jackson to Thomas Danby jun. 30 Dec. 1655. Danbie was also involved in numerous lawsuits during the 1650s, which undoubtedly incurred further expense.111C3/460/44; C5/377/10; C5/387/70; C7/327/107; C7/400/36, 41; C10/35/8; C10/54/44; E112/344/33; E112/345/114; E112/346/156; E134/1652/MICH12; E134/1653/MICH15; E134/1656/EAST20. Nevertheless, despite his debts and his losses in Virginia, he was able to settle lands worth over £2,000 a year on his eldest son upon the latter’s marriage in 1658.112N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087), mss for 1658, 1659. As part of the marriage settlement (which was drawn up by Sir Orlando Bridgeman*), it was agreed that Danby’s son should pay off the remainder of the debt owed to Francis Pierrepont (although this was not finally discharged until the 1680s).113N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2087): mss for 1659; C33/265, f. 339.

Danbie died in London on 5 August 1660 and was buried in York Minster on 18 August.114Skaife, ‘Reg. of burials in York Minster’, 240. In his will, in which he described himself as of Thorpe Perrow, he ordered his executors to sell certain of his properties in order to raise portions of £1,000 for each of his five younger children. If the money thus raised proved insufficient, the shortfall was to be made good out of a debt he was owed of £2,200. He left his lands in Virginia to his second son Christopher and a further £200 if Christopher and his wife should return there ‘to plant upon the land’.115Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 54, f. 97; N. Yorks. RO, ZS (mic. 2106). Danbie’s eldest son Thomas sat for Malton in the 1660 Convention and his grandson, Sir Abstrupus Danby, was returned for Aldborough in 1698.116HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Thomas Danby’; HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Sir Abstrupus Danby’.