DENYS, John (1416-91), of Barnstaple and Orleigh in Buckland Brewer, Devon.

The Denys family of Devonshire was of some antiquity, tracing its origins back to the Danish incursions of the 9th century, a tradition which found reflection in the battle axes which formed the device of their armorial bearings. In the thirteenth century the family split into two branches, one based at Bradford in Milton Damerel, and the other which made its seat at Orleigh in Buckland Brewer, and it was from this latter branch that the Barnstaple MP of 1449 descended. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 773. John Denys was born five days before Christmas in 1416, and baptized on the same day in the parish church of Holsworthy, John Rytherdon and Elizabeth, the wife of Brian Pamplion, acting as godparents. Although there is no evidence to suggest that he was a sickly child, it is possible that his birth was slightly premature, for it took his father by surprise: a servant had to be dispatched to Orleigh, where he had gone to find godparents for the child his wife was expecting. The birth evidently affected the boy’s mother badly: she lay infirm for some time after, and little John had to be entrusted to the care of a wetnurse, Alice, the wife of Robert Pale. C139/104/36.

Denys’s father died when he was just four years old. Within a week, the boy’s wardship and marriage had been sold to one of their neighbours at Holsworthy, Arnulph Chagestey, for just £5, and by the same autumn Chagestey had also secured custody of the Denys lands from the Crown. C139/106/14; CFR, xiv. 360. The young man’s fate in the subsequent decade and a half is obscure, but from his later career it would seem that he underwent some form of legal training. There was an older namesake active in Som. in the 1420s, who attested the parlty. elections of 1422 in that shire. It was probably he, rather than the MP, who was later accused by Richard Mayne* of being ‘a common maintainer of quarrels in the same county’: C1/69/190. Although Denys reached his majority in 1437, it was not until March 1441 that he was able to prove his age, and it took another year before he finally secured livery of his paternal inheritance. C139/104/36, 106/14; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 24-25. This included the manors of Orleigh, Farleigh (in Brendon) and Plaistow (in Shirwell), together with more than 1,000 acres elsewhere in northern Devon, holdings which at his death were said to be worth over £37 p.a., as well as the hereditary bailiwick of the Cornish hundred of Lesnewth. To these he would later add a further 200 acres in the south of the county at Plymptree, Widecombe, East Budleigh, Clyst Honiton and Cotleigh by his marriage to Eleanor, one of the coheirs of Stephen Giffard. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 685.

Within a few years Denys had begun to establish an increasingly busy private legal practice. Among those who called upon his services as an arbiter, feoffee, or simply to attest their property transactions were local gentry like the Arundells of Lanherne, Beaumonts of Heanton Punchardon, Dynhams of Hartland, Pomerays of Berry Pomeroy and the Champernownes, but also senior clergy like William Benselyn, prior of Modbury, CP40/818, rot. 115; 835, rots. 123d, 135d, 257; 836, rot. 133, 133d; 838, rot. 122d; 902, rot. 349d; CP25(1)/46/91/22; C1/28/403, 61/212; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 999, 1207; Arundell mss, AR19/25-26; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Yonge of Puslinch mss, 107/639, 643, 654; Devon RO, Exeter city recs., deeds, 5714M/T/15; Seymour of Berry Pomeroy mss, 3799M-0/ET/17/2; Som. Archs., Sanford of Nynehead mss, DD\SF/1398, 1463, 1469; W. Suss. RO, Goodwood Estate archs. E275-6; CCR, 1454-61, p. 375; 1485-1500, p. 80. and even prominent fellow members of the legal profession, like Thomas Calwodlegh* and John Copplestone*, of whose will he was an executor and with whose family he formed a long-running association. CPR, 1476-85, p. 239; C67/49, m. 8; C1/32/241, 73/85; CP40/810, rot. 296d; 866, rot. 48. Equally lasting were Denys’s ties with another prominent local family, the Beaumonts. He was appointed one of the feoffees of the family property by Sir Thomas Beaumont, and continued to serve Sir Thomas’s third son and eventual heir, Philip, and the latter’s heir, another Thomas, in the same capacity, as well as from time to time carrying out the duties of their estate steward. From his connexion with the Beaumonts arose a quarrel with Sir John Halewell†, who after marrying Sir Thomas’s widow claimed an annuity from the Beaumont estates, which – so he maintained – Philip Beaumont had assigned to his mother in lieu of dower. C147/145; C67/53, m. 24; C1/77/61; KB9/351/63-64; CPR, 1476-85, p. 307; N. Devon RO, Chichester of Devon mss, 48/25/9/3-5; Incledon-Webber mss, 3704M/EF1.

One among Denys’s clients was, however, clearly pre-eminent: by the end of the 1440s he had entered the circle of Thomas Courtenay, earl of Devon, who was the feudal overlord of Denys’s most valuable manor of Farleigh, as well as possessing in his disputed capacity as steward of the duchy of Cornwall a connexion with Denys as hereditary bailiff of Lesnewth. While Denys was also linked by feudal tenure to the lords of the honour of Barnstaple, the Holand dukes of Exeter, it may nevertheless have been the influence of Earl Thomas (who held the ‘castle manor’ in Barnstaple), as much as his own reputation as a lawyer that secured him his first parliamentary seat in February 1449. Certainly, however, he was also personally known to the burgesses of Barnstaple. Although he is unlikely to have fulfilled the statutory requirement for residence, he owned a number of properties within the borough, and was from time to time employed by the local merchant community in his professional capacity.

Denys maintained his connexion with the Courtenays beyond Earl Thomas’s lifetime. Although he did not become directly involved in the earl’s campaign of open violence against his local rival William, Lord Bonville*, he was closely associated with other leading members of the Courtenay circle (including Thomas Holand* and Thomas Welywrought*) in his professional activities, and by the end of the 1450s he was one of the feoffees of the comital estates for the second Earl Thomas. After the latter’s attainder and execution in 1461 Denys transferred his service to the earl’s younger brother, Henry, for whom he was acting as an auditor by the mid 1460s. M. Cherry, ‘Struggle for Power’, in Patronage, Crown and Provinces ed. Griffiths, 130; E207/16/6/19; C145/322/16. Rather than indicating involvement in the earl’s rioting in 1451 the pardon Denys procured in June 1452 was probably connected with ongoing difficulties over his inheritance: C67/40, m. 22.

Meanwhile, by the mid 1450s Denys had come to the government’s attention, and he was from time to time employed as a justice of gaol delivery or commissioner of inquiry. It was not, however, until after Edward IV’s accession that he came to play a prominent part in local administration. From the summer of 1463 he was regularly appointed to commissions in the south-west, the following autumn he was added to the quorum of the Devon bench (on which he would serve intermittently until his death), and his presence is recorded at the shire elections of 1467 and 1472. C1/51/83; C219/17/1, 2. It is a mark of his usefulness as a Crown servant that in the crisis of 1470-1 his transition into the allegiance of the restored Henry VI was apparently seamless. On Christmas Day 1470 the dean of Exeter was instructed to take the oath of office of the newly appointed Devon bench, among its members Denys, and on 9 Jan. the lawyer was duly sworn in. C254/149/85-86. In this period of renewed upheaval Denys’s professional counsel was much in demand in his native region. Thus, the burgesses of Launceston rewarded him for his advice with a gift of red wine, and the citizens of Exeter, who had previously drawn upon Denys’s expertise on an ad hoc basis, now formally retained him as one of their legal counsel and began to pay him a regular annual fee of 20s. Cornw. RO, Launceston bor. recs., B/Laus/147, m. 2; Devon RO, Exeter receivers’ accts. 38-39 Hen. VI, 10 Edw. IV-1 Hen. VII, 2-3 Hen. VII. In subsequent years others followed suit. By 1482 Denys was apparently serving as recorder of Plymouth, and by the end of the decade he was in receipt of an annual pension from the treasurer of England, John, Lord Dynham. HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 269; Arundell mss, AR2/881. Equally, he found employment as a commissioner during the short reign of Richard III and was once again returned to the Parliament of 1484 by the burgesses of Barnstaple, but continued to serve on the county bench after Bosworth.

Both Denys’s private practice and his service to the Crown provided ample opportunities for enrichment: of these, his acquisition in 1480 of the wardship of Thomas, the 14-year-old grandson and heir of John Hacche*, with whose executors he was already in dispute over the payment of a bond for 200 marks, provides an example. CPR, 1476-85, pp. 214, 225; C1/59/99; C254/154/144; CP40/866, rot. 81; DL5/1, ff. 28-28v. Denys died on 7 May 1491 and was succeeded by his eldest son, William, who was still under age, and whose wardship, along with the custody of his estates, was granted to Roger Holland†. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 685; CPR, 1485-94, p. 368.