DAWEN, William, of ?Plymouth, Devon.

Dawen was probably a local man, and may have been a kinsman of the Richard Dawne who in 1445 appealed for mayhem certain Cornish retainers (including Thomas Lanhergy*, William Bere* and Otto Nicoll*) of Sir William Bonville*, the steward of Aquitaine. CPR, 1441-6, p. 424; KB145/6/21; KB27/737, rex rot. 17d; 751, rex rot. 17; 805, rex rot. 23; 849, rex rot. 31. Few details of William’s career have been discovered, but it was perhaps he who at some point in the second half of the fifteenth century was sued in association with Stephen Ridgeway by one William Goodman for failing to keep the terms of an enfeoffment of lands in Staddon (in Plymstock). C1/1502/5. Wedgwood erroneously believed the MP to have been William Dawnay, a kinsman and retainer of the earls of Devon, but the man in question was dead by 1441, long before his supposed election to the Commons: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 262-3; E159/200, brevia Easter rot. 6d; CCR, 1422-9, pp. 39-40; 1435-41, p. 418. A William Downe was associated with the earl of Devon’s cousin (Sir) Philip Courtenay* of Powderham and Sir William Palton* in the mid 1440s, and still alive in 1459: C147/155; Devon RO, Fortescue mss, 1262M/TZ/3. It is just possible that the MP can be identified with the William Downe, married to Alice, who was active in Okehampton in the 1480s (Devon RO, Okehampton bor. recs., 32481-0/11/120, 125).