DANVERS, Richard (d.1489), of Prescote in Cropredy, Oxon and London.

Given that as many as 13 of John Danvers’s children survived to adulthood, Richard, the second son, cannot have expected to inherit a particularly sizeable part of the family estates. However, John made some provision for him and his older brother Robert in 1439, by joining them with him in the purchase of certain parcels of land, whereby Robert obtained holdings in Buckinghamshire, and Richard a corner tenement, called the ‘New Inn’ in Deddington, an expanding town on the Oxford road a few miles south of Banbury. CCR, 1435-41, p. 334. Furthermore, when John died in 1449 he was succeeded at Epwell, Prescote and Bourton (all in the neighbourhood of Banbury) by these same two sons of his first wife. A 3rd s. of this marriage, John, took holy orders, and obtained the degree of DCL. Richard’s share included the manor of Prescote, and although it is unclear precisely when he took possession, an inquisition held after the death of his own son and namesake in 1504 stated that John had settled the manor on our MP in tail-male. In the year of his father’s death Richard received from one John Dene of Shutford a release of lands in Shutford, Epwell and Clifton. Macnamara, 116-17 (quoting Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Clifton and Deddington deeds, 4A), 141-3; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 969. On his own account, he added to this patrimony in Oxfordshire by acquiring property in Banbury, Bodicote and Wickham in 1455. CP25(1)/191/28/50. Meanwhile, he and his brother Robert had evidently aroused the enmity of their stepmother’s second husband, Walter Mauntell of Farninghoe, Northamptonshire, who was required to enter bonds in 300 marks in November 1451 that he would do no harm to them or their tenants. CCR, 1447-54, p. 321. Doubtless a dispute over their stepmother’s dower lay behind the quarrel.

Richard’s marriage does not appear to have added much to his landed possessions, for Elizabeth Langston was not an heiress. Yet it did lead to a profitable match for one of his half-sisters, Amice, who was married to Elizabeth’s brother John Langston, the heir to their family’s estates in Buckinghamshire. Richard may well have played a part in brokering the match, for a royal licence to settle an Oxfordshire manor on the couple in jointure was obtained for his father and John Langston while Richard’s first Parliament was in session. Caversfield, where his wife’s family lived, lies some two miles north of Bicester, the site of the priory where, as we learn from his will, our MP had ‘a small place in which he used to dwell’. Probably this was a cell within the priory buildings which he used for occasional retreats into religion. Macnamara, 119, 125-7; CPR, 1446-52, p. 214.

That Richard eventually became a landowner of substance may be attributed not only to his ability as a lawyer but also to his involvement in the wool trade and membership of the Calais staple. It was rare for a professional lawyer to pursue mercantile interests to any notable extent, yet in both activities he followed the lead of his eldest brother, to their mutual advantage. Unlike Robert, who entered Lincoln’s Inn, Richard appears to have become a member of the Inner Temple, This is suggested by an arrangement made in 1468 whereby payment of money due to him was to be made to the steward of the Inn if he himself was absent: Magdalen Coll. Henton deeds, 27.and his legal training was probably instrumental in securing his first election to Parliament as MP for Shaftesbury in Dorset, a place where his family had neither lands nor material interests, but where the townsmen showed a distinct preference to be represented by men of law. There is more evidence to link him with Horsham in Sussex, the borough which returned him to the consecutive Parliament of November 1449. His very early career is poorly documented, but there is a brief mention of him, curiously described as ‘of Sussex, gentleman’, acting in 1426 as a mainpernor at the Exchequer for Walter Urry*. CFR, xv. 145. How this connexion with Urry, a lawyer and retainer of the dowager countess of Arundel, had come about remains a matter for speculation, but it may have been a factor in his return, for Horsham had been at the centre of Urry’s considerable estates, which had passed after his death in 1446/7 to his son-in-law the influential Thomas Hoo II*. Richard is known to have had financial dealings with Hoo, who was shortly to become (if he was not already) a leading counsellor to the lord of the borough, John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, and it is feasible that he too had entered Mowbray’s service by this date, for later, on 20 Apr. 1453, the duke granted him for life an annuity of four marks, the rent due from ducal property in Henton, Oxfordshire. Magdalen Coll. Henton deeds, 30; C140/5/46, m. 2. The rent was payable by the Barantyne fam. An arbitration award dated 1 Feb. 1468 stipulated that henceforth Danvers’s kinsman John Barantyne need only pay half of the annuity. Another factor in Richard’s election for Horsham may have been his brother Robert’s position as a member of the quorum on the Sussex bench; the latter’s connexions in the locality perhaps contributed to his successful candidacy.

Before Richard entered the Commons, the Danvers brothers had already established useful contacts with members of the Lords. Robert had been closely involved in the foundation of All Souls College, Oxford, as a trusted servant of Archbishop Chichele, whom he served as an executor, and Richard also took an interest in the enterprise, albeit to a lesser extent. In June 1449 (during the final session of his first Parliament) transactions were completed regarding the grant to the college of certain manors of which he had been a feoffee. CPR, 1446-52, p. 279. Among his fellows was John Fray†, his brother-in-law, who, formerly chief baron of the Exchequer, was now made under treasurer to James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele. Such links may have been behind Richard’s first appointment to royal office, as escheator of Northamptonshire and Rutland, made while the second of his Parliaments was assembled at Westminster in the following autumn. While the Commons were sitting on 10 Mar. 1450, during the second session, a Hampshire landowner, William Ringbourne*, died, and just eight days later Danvers secured at the Exchequer the valuable wardship and marriage of his heir. CFR, xviii. 150. Probably the under treasurer, Fray, helped him to do so, although it is also possible that by this date a more personal relationship had been formed with the treasurer himself, by the marriage of Danvers’s half-brother Thomas to Lord Saye’s daughter.

Some of the business of this Parliament of 1449-50 closely touched the interests of the Danvers brothers, since it affected their dealings as merchants of the Calais staple. The staplers were currently negotiating for repayment of their loans to the Crown, now amounting to £10,700, and Robert, as one of their number, was among the creditors involved. That these affairs, and the serious question of the financing of the garrisons at Calais in future, undoubtedly affected Richard too is clear from the scale of the wool shipments he made, often using the same vessels as his brother, in the fleet which left London for Calais on 23 May 1450, while the third session of the Parliament was in progress at Leicester. E122/73/26. The outbreak of rebellion in the south-east brought the Parliament to a close, and prompted the elevation of Robert Danvers to the judiciary to help restore order, and it was not until the following year that the brothers’ trading interests again assumed importance. Serious infringements of the Anglo-Burgundian truce led the duke of Burgundy to seize goods worth £2,000 belonging to the staplers, which goods were redeemed by the merchants on the King’s command, on the promise that that they might recoup their loss from the subsidies due on wool shipped through Boston. Nevertheless, by October 1454 the sum of £1,800 was still owing to them. The King then made further grants, including one which stipulated that Robert and Richard Danvers and two of their trading partners might make shipments free of subsidies up to the sum of £343. CPR, 1452-61, p. 213; CCR, 1454-61, p. 18. The brothers continued to export wool from London via Calais throughout the rest of the decade. E122/75/47; 213/8.

In these years Richard, who usually resided in the capital, was often associated with London merchants, yet despite his participation in trade he did not join a Company, and continued to be called ‘gentleman’. However, his contacts within the civic hierarchy no doubt assisted one of his half-brothers, Henry, to set up in business as a mercer. CCR, 1476-85, no. 1195. Richard’s most notable connexions in the City were his niece’s husband, the prominent grocer John Leynham alias Plomer, whom he helped in his dealings with land in the 1460s and later, CCR, 1447-54, p. 492; 1468-76, no. 1358; 1476-85, no. 703; CFR, xx. 137, 208; Corp. London RO, hr 189/14, 191/14. and Ralph Verney* the mercer (a distant kinsman who became more closely related to the Danvers family through the marriages of his father-in-law to Richard’s half-sister Bona, and of his daughter to Henry Danvers). London and Mdx. Feet of Fines, 202; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 723, 1358; Macnamara, 190-2. It looks as if the profits of trade, rather than those of the law, brought Richard the wealth of his later years. Nevertheless, as a petition he addressed to the chancellor indicates, on occasion he suffered losses. When a merchant named Richard Heyron, who owed him £490 for a consignment of wool, fled the country leaving the debt unpaid, he ordered his attorney to seize 300 tonnes of iron belonging to Heyron at Middleburgh, but the factor of Thomas Cook II*, another of Heyron’s creditors, also tried to seize the goods, and the two attorneys fell into ‘grete variances and discordes’, since the value of the iron was insufficient to cover both debts. C1/71/3. Danvers’s appointment as collector of customs and subsidies in Southampton in 1458, made by nomination of his fellow merchants of the staple, may have also owed something to his links with the chancellor, Bishop Waynflete, in whose service his half-brother Thomas had risen to prominence.

Concurrently with his business interests, Danvers had an important role to play in his native county of Oxfordshire, where he joined his brother Robert the judge as a member of the quorum on the county bench in 1453. Three years later they were joined by a third Danvers brother, William, and in 1458 by a fourth, Thomas, so that together they held a predominant place in peace-keeping in the region. Although this state of affairs did not last long, Richard himself continued to be a j.p. until his death, a period of 36 years altogether. Little may be deduced from the surviving records about his political stance in the 1450s and more particularly in the civil war years of 1459-61. He had taken out a royal pardon in October 1455, but as this referred to his former office as escheator it may have related to discrepancies in his accounts rather than to current events. More significance might be attached to his removal from the quorum in 1462, although he remained on the bench and was reinstated to the quorum at the subsequent peace commission after he obtained another pardon in April 1464. C67/41, m. 26; 45, m. 8. On the other hand, there are no signs of any firm personal commitment to the Yorkist regime in Edward IV’s first reign, and it may be remarked that during that period Danvers’s tenure of his property at Prescote, seemingly unchallenged hitherto, came under threat. An esquire named Humphrey Willingham led a body of men to make a forcible entry there in March 1463, assaulting Danvers, who was later awarded damages of £200 and costs of £20. Willingham was imprisoned in the Marshalsea until October 1465, when he was handed over to the custody of the sheriffs of Middlesex, only to be wrongfully set at liberty on 20 July 1468, before our MP had received satisfaction. E13/155, Easter rot. 5. This premature release evidently had wider political implications, for it coincided with a crisis in the affairs of Danvers’s half-brother Thomas, who shortly before had been imprisoned in the Tower on suspicion of treasonably communicating with the exiled Lancastrian court. Richard himself hastened to procure a royal pardon. C67/46, m. 31. A further attack on Prescote was made the following March, this time led by Sir Edward Ralegh, the sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, whose men allegedly set their hounds on Danvers’s sheep grazing there, killed his dog and seriously wounded Danvers himself. E13/155, Trin. rot. 1; KB27/834, rot. 17.

Whether the insecurity engendered by these attacks led Danvers to support the government of the Readeption in 1470-1 cannot now be ascertained. All that is certain is that he was kept on as a member of the quorum in Oxfordshire when the earl of Warwick took control of the government. But this may denote little, for on Edward IV’s return to power in the spring of 1471 he was not only reappointed to the bench, but also, in June that year, made collector of tunnage and poundage in London. In the first two years he occupied this post Danvers and his fellow collector earned substantial rewards for their efforts abounding to the King’s profit, his share in these rewards amounting to over £146. E405/54, rot. 4d; 55, rot. 4d; 57, rot. 4d. It should also be noted that during his period in office he was prepared to make substantial loans to the Crown, advancing as much as £1,030, E405/56, rot. 3; 57, rots. 1d, 3; 58, rot. 1. although whether to reassure the King about his loyalty or in the hope of securing further concessions is unclear. Similarly obscure is the background to transactions completed in August 1471, whereby he and certain of his kinsmen and business associates (including Richard Quatermayns*, Richard Fowler† and Henry Danvers) received bonds totalling £585, which, payable over nearly 20 years, were to be cancelled on the death of Thomas Witham, the former chancellor of the Exchequer. CCR, 1468-76, no. 723. Witham, an appointee of the late earl of Warwick, had been replaced in the chancellorship in 1469 by Fowler, who now himself resigned the office on his move to the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster. Here, therefore, Danvers may have been supporting Fowler, his brother-in-law, in financial dealings otherwise unexplained, in the same way as he supported him and his family in his other affairs in the 1470s. CCR, 1468-76, nos. 1046, 1110; Landsdowne Ch. 575; CP25(1)/191/29/13; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1237-8. Such contacts within the government can only have worked to the advantage of the Danvers brothers. From early in 1474 three of them were again serving as members of the quorum in Oxfordshire, and this was also the case in the early 1480s. Meanwhile, Richard had held office as controller of tunnage and poundage in London for three years, a post which earned him further rewards. Pardons he obtained in March 1483 (from Edward IV), March 1484 (from Richard III), and the autumn of 1485 (from Henry VII), all specifically mention his official positions; E405/65, rot. 1; C67/50, m. 1; 51, m. 18; 53, m. 2. there is nothing to suggest that he ever jeopardized his family and fortune by ill-considered partisanship.

Much of Richard’s time was taken up by family affairs, especially after his older brother Sir Robert died. The two of them had always been close, acting in concert in transactions regarding property, trading ventures and business deals, and when the judge made his will in April 1467 he named Richard and their sister Agnes, now widow of Sir John Fray, as his executors. Following his death, in July these two obtained for the small payment of £20 the wardship and marriage of Joan, the only one of Sir Robert’s three daughters and coheiresses still under age and unmarried. They were not required to pay anything else into the Exchequer for the custody of Joan’s inheritance, nor, apparently, even to provide sureties. PCC 18 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 140); CFR, xx. 203; E405/47, rot. 3. Determined that the late judge’s estates, notably the manors of Culworth and Sulgrave in Northamptonshire, should not be lost to the male Danvers line, Richard now set about buying them from his nieces. First, in June 1469 his niece Agnes and her husband Walter Denys mortgaged Culworth to him for £126 and a further £24 ‘in the name of two years rent’, only to relinquish their title to both manors to him two years later; and then, similarly, in 1472 the couple mortgaged other Danvers lands in Rutland, Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire, this time for £300, and transferred possession to Richard before the year was out. Add. Chs. 38849, 38755, 38851-3, 38860, 38970, 38972-3; J. Bridges, Northants. i. 163; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1010. Also in 1472, our MP entered negotiations with George Burneby and Alice his wife, the eldest of the coheiresses, regarding their portion of the estates, for which he agreed to pay £360. Add. Chs. 38855-7, 38859. He arranged for the third girl, his ward Joan, to marry Henry Frowyk, son and heir apparent of (Sir) Thomas Frowyk II*, making a settlement of land worth £20 p.a. on the couple and handing over to them plate worth £500, C1/308/65. but then bought out Joan’s share of the Culworth estate, in transactions confirmed by her father-in-law and by final concord in 1476. Add. Chs. 38861-4. While the total amount he paid remains unknown, it certainly came to well over £1,000, a sum which he may have amassed from the profits of his trade in wool. To put the stamp on his ownership of Culworth, in June 1474 he obtained a royal grant of free warren in all his lands there, as well as at his other main residence, Prescote. CPR, 1467-77, p. 452.

Over the years Danvers had also invested in property elsewhere, sometimes by foreclosing on mortgages. For example, in 1463 he had bought land in Pinner and Harrow, Middlesex, from Richard Merssh, from whom he also acquired, in the following year, three tenements in Westminster – two of them in Kings Street, next to the royal chapel in St. Stephens, and another called The Kings Head. The agreement involved a mortgage of £120, with provision that if Merssh paid him back £160 within three years Danvers would return the properties to him. In the event, Danvers offered Merssh £40 more in 1466, thus securing possession. CP25(1)/152/96/4, 11; CCR, 1461-8, pp. 256, 299-300, 368. While details about his business as a money-lender and the scale of this enterprise remain obscure, it is clear that he sometimes made loans in partnership with his brother Robert , Cf. C1/43/138-43; CCR, 1485-1500, no. 1014. and on one occasion he was associated with William Staveley† in the matter of (Sir) Thomas Tresham*’s mortgage of the manor of Broughton. CAD, i. A684.

Richard was always closely involved in the affairs of his sister, Agnes, who married four times, taking as her third husband (after the death of Sir John Fray in 1461), John Wenlock*, Lord Wenlock (d.1471) and as her fourth (Sir) John Say II*, who had been Speaker in his first Parliament, long before. Richard was called upon by Fray to assist in making settlements on Agnes, and on their daughters, Harl. Ch. 55 C 43; CIPM, Hen. VII, i. 993; CAD, iii. D562; E210/2612. and they collaborated in various business deals. For instance, in 1455 Thomas Hoo and his associates had been bound to Fray, Agnes and Richard in the sum of £400. Although this amount was allegedly handed over to Agnes, through the negligence of Hoo’s kinsman Thomas Etchingham the obligation itself was left in her possession, and after her marriage to Say she and her brother brought an action for a debt of £100 against one of the associates, Robert Fleming, dean of the cathedral church of Lincoln. C1/54/228. In her will of 11 June 1478 Agnes divided her ‘goodes of the stokke of £400’ into six parts, one of which was left to Richard. Cal. P. and M. London, 1458-82, pp. 136-9.

A landowner of wealth and consequence, who had successfully emerged unscathed from the perils of the civil wars and was well respected in Oxfordshire society, For instance, (Sir) Richard Harcourt* asked him to be his feoffee: CIPM Hen. VII, i. 168. could naturally expect to make good marriages for his highly eligible children. Such proved to be the case. One of his daughters, Margaret, was married, probably before March 1478, to Thomas Englefield† of Englefield, Berkshire, a promising young lawyer destined to be Speaker in Henry VII’s sixth Parliament. J.S. Roskell, Speakers, 305n. For the date suggested see E210/5515. Another, Elizabeth, was wedded to William Dale, son and heir of John Dale of Tickencote, Rutland, and received a settlement in jointure of the manor of Wimpole, Cambridgeshire, in 1480, when her husband was still a minor. Add. Chs. 38757-8; Macnamara, 141; VCH Cambs. v. 266. Our MP’s elder son and namesake was married a few years later to Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of the Oxfordshire landowner, Richard Preston, and when in 1486 the latter was found to be an idiot, Richard Danvers junior and his brother-in-law Englefeld secured custody of the Preston lands. CPR, 1485-94, p. 112; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 496 Macnamara, 138-40. For his second son, John, our MP made an excellent match, by marrying him to Anne Stradling, who just a few weeks before the contract was sealed had unexpectedly and in dramatic circumstances become the sole heiress of the Stradling and Dauntsey estates. A few years earlier, Danvers’s brother-in-law Richard Fowler had obtained the wardship of Anne’s brother Edward Stradling, and in his will of 1478 provided that his daughter Joan should marry him when she became 15. As nominee of Fowler’s trustees, Henry Danvers, our MP’s half-brother, then took over Edward’s guardianship, but on 27 June 1483, the day after Richard III seized the throne, the ward’s stepfather Richard Pole† (one of the new King’s retainers) abducted him. Pole’s actions were subsequently brought to the attention of the courts, but tradition has it that the boy and his mother were both murdered. According to Edward’s inquisition post mortem he died on 4 Nov. 1487. Opportunely, on 13 Dec., less than six weeks later, his sister and heir Anne was married to our MP’s younger and favourite son. It may be remarked that the groom’s father thought it prudent to ask six leading lawyers (three of whom later rose to be chief justices), to join the distinguished party of witnesses to the nuptials; he was taking no chances that the validity of the match would be questioned. Macnamara, 171, 229, 231-8, 263-7; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 281; Add. Chs. 38869, 38875-6. Danvers made a generous settlement on the couple, now handing over to them his manors of Culworth and Sulgrave. They made their home at Culworth, and from them the main line of the family eventually descended. Add. Chs. 38866, 38869.

A Richard Danvers was governor of Inner Temple in 1484, but it seems more likely that this was the MP’s son (then in his forties), rather than he himself, given his advanced age. Readings and Moots, ii. (Selden Soc. cv), pp. cxxiv-v (from CP40/888, rot. 222d). His will, made on 27 Jan. 1489 and proved on 20 Feb. following, shows that he had interested himself in the works of restoration of the churches in the neighbourhood of Prescote, to which, with the fabric of the nave of Lincoln cathedral and Sheen priory, he left a total of £30. A further £30 was set aside to provide prayers for his soul at three other priories. Our MP’s uneasy conscience about some dubious dealing he had done in the past prompted him to bequeath £10 to Sir John Heveningham, because he had sold him a weight of ‘polyn wex’ at an excessive price. His executors were his younger son, John, and son-in-law Englefield. Although this is not mentioned in the will he had assigned to the latter the sum of £50 to be used if necessary in defending the Danvers family’s title to Prescote (in the event, the money was not needed). PCC 32 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 254), printed in Some Oxon. Wills (Oxon. Rec. Soc. xxxix), 41; E210/6649. Danvers died on 14 Feb. He had not specified a place of burial in his will, but was almost certainly interred either in the Danvers chapel at Cropredy, next to his wife, or else in the church at Bicester, where a memorial tablet, now lost, depicted a shield bearing the Danvers arms and an inscription. Macnamara, 123-5, 134-5. The MP’s elder son and heir, Richard, died in 1504 without male issue, so the latter’s brother, now Sir John, inherited Prescote which descended in tail-male. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 487, 528; ii. 969. John had been knighted three years earlier at the wedding of Prince Arthur to Catherine of Aragon, on the same occasion as the knighting of his elderly uncles, Thomas and William. Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 33.