Delves was the nephew and heir presumptive of the eminent soldier and landowner, Sir John Delves, who died without issue shortly after November 1370, leaving his extensive estates in Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Warwickshire to his younger brother, Henry, with a remainder to the latter’s son, the subject of this biography.
Save for a reference to him in his uncle’s will of 1369, Delves is not otherwise mentioned until February 1377, when he acted as a mainpernor at the Exchequer for Fulk Corbet and Philip Fitzwaryn. Three years later, in May 1380, he obtained royal letters of protection pending his departure for France in the retinue of his kinsman by marriage, Sir Hugh Calveley (one of the great captains of Edward III’s reign), and he was present at Clary sur Somme during the following summer.
In February 1389 and June 1390, Delves bound himself in sums of 80 marks and 12 marks respectively to the keeper of the hanaper of Chancery — an undertaking which was probably connected with an exchange of property made between Henry Cotton, his uncle’s last surviving feoffee, and the Crown. Together with his father, Delves offered sureties totalling £300 to Cotton during this period, and by November 1392 he was in possession of the manor and advowson of Walton-upon-Trent in Derbyshire, newly acquired from the King.
Delves died in 1394 while involved in litigation with Roger Swynnerton over an alleged debt of £20. His son, John, who served as escheator and sheriff of Staffordshire and represented the county in Parliament, had not long to wait for possession of the family estates, since his grandparents, Henry and Isabel Delves, died within a few months of each other one year later, and their property came immediately into his hands.