DANVERS, Robert

The eldest of the eight sons of the prolific John Danvers, and first of the formidable quintet to enter the legal profession, Robert set a high standard for his younger brothers to emulate. His rise to the judiciary at a time of national crisis points to a man of outstanding ability, indeed to one who already moved in the circles of the powerful. Furthermore, his active role in the foundation of All Soul’s College, Oxford, echoed by that of his younger brother Thomas at nearby Magdalen, ensured that the achievements of his family would be long remembered.

As his successful career gives ample proof, Robert inherited the business acumen and energy of his father. Perhaps an awareness that his many siblings would exert a call on their patrimony led him to forge his own way, so that well before his father’s death in 1449 he established a sound reputation as a lawyer and his own prominent place among the Oxfordshire gentry. He undertook to keep his third Christmas at Lincoln’s Inn in 1420,13 L. Inn Adm. i. 4. and in the decade that followed he used the contacts he made there to further his career. More important, however, were associates from his native county. In July 1426, along with his father, he joined the influential Thomas Chaucer* in receiving at the Exchequer a grant of the wardship of lands late of Sir William Birmingham†, together with the marriage of his heir, and although this arrangement was changed a few months later (when he and John alone agreed to pay £50 for the marriage), his links with Chaucer continued.14 CFR, xv. 132, 162; CIPM, xxiii. 414. He became immersed in the business of his Inn, being made a governor for the first of four terms in 1427; and the growth in his knowledge of the law is signposted by the readings he gave in the following Lent and in 1433.15 Readings and Moots i. (Selden Soc. lxxi), p. xii. It was in the latter year that he came to the attention of the King’s council, in a somewhat curious way. Two years previously he had been engaged as legal counsel to the Oxfordshire landowner Thomas St. Cler touching his claim to the manors of Barton St. John and Staunton St. John, and as an inquisition taken in 1353 provided conclusive evidence of title he had sued in Chancery for letters patent of exemplification, but was now being defamed for forging the evidence. A crucial element in his case was that the heir to the property in 1353 had been aged 40 and more, but since the exemplification had been issued this number, which, he said, had been in clear and uniform writing on the document when he had examined it, had been erased and re-written in fresh ink. On 20 June he presented himself to the council in the Star Chamber in Westminster palace to seek exoneration. Through dint of subterfuge on his part, he was able successfully to prove that the culprit was William Brocket, a clerk of the Exchequer, who was duly called before the council and expelled from office. The council commended Danvers’s endeavours, and the chancellor declared his innocence, authorizing the formal enrolment of all the details of the case.16 CCR, 1429-35, pp. 254-6; Sel. Cases before King’s Council (Selden Soc. xxxv), 97-101. The dispute over the Oxfordshire manors was not to be settled so quickly; indeed, it went on for many more years, even on one occasion coming to the attention of Parliament. In 1456 the elderly Richard Petworth, former secretary of Cardinal Beaufort, testified that he had once asked Danvers and Beaufort’s cousin Chaucer to verify that an ‘old deed’ relating to the property was not a forgery, and had later heard that the document had been ‘redde and shewed in open parlement fore the Kynge and his lords, and to the commons, and understode by them all for a trewe dede’.17 CCR, 1454-61, p. 145.

The Parliament in question may have been one of those in which Danvers sat in the Commons, perhaps that which met on 10 Oct. 1435, not long after Thomas St. Cler died overseas and a major controversy over the wardship of his estates had begun.18 VCH Oxon. v. 285; xi. 62. Cf. CIPM, xxv. nos. 532-4; C139/73/4; C145/308, no. 56. St. Cler was a leading Sussex landowner as well as an Oxfordshire one, and it is a fair speculation that his feoffees played a significant part in Danvers’s election for the Sussex borough of East Grinstead, a place with which he himself had no recorded connexion, but where the St. Clers had substantial holdings. It was later alleged that he, together with one of these feoffees, John Aston of Somerton, Oxfordshire, illegally entered the St. Cler estates on 20 July 1435, and took the very substantial issues for the next four years, defrauding the King of his rights of wardship.19 E13/141, rots. 27, 27d, 28d, 35. While the Parliament was in session, in November, Aston entered bonds in £200 at the staple of Westminster to Robert and his father John (also in the Commons, as a shire knight for Oxfordshire).20 C241/228/144. It may be that the latter were hoping to secure the marriage of one of the three St. Cler heiresses for Robert or a brother of his, in the same way that Aston did for his own son John, but if so they failed in their aspirations.

Robert was returned to the next Parliament, in 1437, this time representing his native county. Although he usually resided in Oxfordshire, and was described that year as a gentleman ‘of Calthorpe’, the family seat,21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 393; CFR, xvi. 345. his election for the shire did not so much reflect on his status as a landowner in the region (for his holdings at this stage were of relatively little account), but rather on his reputation as a lawyer and the strength of his links among the local gentry. It may be noted that the sheriff making the return was Richard Quatermayns*, his stepmother’s uncle, and that a number of his father’s associates had engaged his services for their business transactions earlier in the decade. For instance, Sir Thomas Strange† (d.1436) had made him a feoffee and an executor along with his father and Sir Thomas Wykeham*,22 CCR, 1429-35, p. 119; C67/38, m. 1; CPR, 1436-41, p. 472; E159/215, brevia Easter rot. 21d. a man with whom John Danvers had long been on amicable terms. Robert joined his father as party to numerous dealings with Wykeham regarding his manors in Adderbury, one of which subsequently came into their possession, and also relating to that at Bloxham, putting entails into effect on behalf of Sir Thomas and his family.23 CCR, 1429-35, p. 308; 1435-41, p. 450; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 347, 514; Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Otterbourne mss, 90, 91; CP25(1)/191/28/9, 10. Perhaps more significant in regard to his election to Parliament in 1437 was Robert’s connexion with Thomas Chaucer’s son-in-law, William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, by whom he had been engaged as a feoffee since 1430, then having been party to the landed settlements made on him and Alice Chaucer at the time of their marriage.24 CAD, v. A10892; Harl. Chs. 50 H 27, 28; CPR, 1429-36, p. 346; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 361-2; 1447-54, pp. 210, 213, 215. On the earl’s behalf, shortly before the Parliament had opened he and others, nearly all lawyers, had entered recognizances in 1,000 marks to Humphrey, earl of Stafford, and he also offered sureties for de la Pole at the Exchequer in July 1437, three months after the Parliament’s dissolution.25 CCR, 1435-41, p. 102; CFR, xvi. 345.

While there is nothing to indicate that the earl of Suffolk was instrumental in Danvers’s subsequent advancement, it is likely that our MP’s brother-in-law, John Fray†, who was chief baron of the Exchequer from 1436 to 1448, played a part; and above all his career was furthered by Henry Chichele, archbishop of Canterbury, whom he assisted in the great task of endowing All Soul’s College. Chichele did his best to secure the future of his foundation by making Henry VI a co-founder and by having the royal charter confirmed by the Pope. In order to carry out his plans, he needed the help of a clever man of affairs, who sympathized with his views; Danvers proved to be such a one. The college was founded by the King in 1438, on a site granted to him by the archbishop’s feoffees, and over the next five years a small group of the latter, invariably including Danvers and the archbishop’s kinsman Thomas Chichele, archdeacon of Canterbury, made a series of conveyances of property in its support.26 Cat. Archs. All Souls Coll. ed. Martin, passim; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 172-3, 389; Reg. Chichele, i. pp. lv, lviii. Danvers was associated with Archbishop Chichele in 1441 in receiving a royal grant of two alien priories in Wales, which, along with other manors formed part of the benefaction,27 CPR, 1436-41, p. 531; 1441-6, pp. 19-20; CCR, 1435-41, p. 491. and such was the archbishop’s trust in him, that he named him among his executors.28 CPR, 1441-6, p. 305; CP40/738, rot. 52d. These undertakings kept him busy for many years after Chichele’s death in 1443; indeed, the executorship was referred to in a pardon he obtained as late as 1465.29 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 278-9; C67/45, m. 5. Danvers’s links with All Souls, for which he also acted as attorney, long continued, and he was among the benefactors of the college for whom prayers were offered in his lifetime.30 Cat. Archs. All Souls Coll. 396. To a much lesser extent he was also party to transactions completed on behalf of Bishop Waynflete’s foundation at Magdalen College, but there it was his younger brother Thomas who was to take the predominant role.31 Magdalen Coll. Stainswyke deeds, 19, 37.

In the meantime, in 1441 Danvers had taken on the post of common serjeant of London, an unusual appointment for someone from Lincoln’s Inn, for most common serjeants of the period came from Gray’s.32 N.L. Ramsay, ‘The English Legal Profession’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 143. Even so, he held it for only a few months, for in July 1442 he replaced John Bowes*, who was terminally ill, as recorder of the city. Further legal promotion soon followed in the next year, after he took the coif by royal order of 14 Feb. 1443,33 CCR, 1441-7, p. 87. and subsequently with his appointment as a justice of assize.34 CPR, 1447-54, pp. 310-11. As recorder of London over a period of eight years Danvers was especially assiduous in his duties, in particular when it came to attending elections of sheriffs and mayors,35 Cal. London Letter Bk., K, passim. and in January 1445 he was even chosen to represent the city in Parliament, only to be replaced a few days later. It might be supposed that he stood down in the expectation of securing election for Oxfordshire again, but in fact two other men were the successful candidates there. Possibly he sought exoneration because of his commitments as a justice of assize, but more likely city politics were the key to the alteration, for although his predecessor as recorder had been elected to the previous Parliament, that of 1442, the election of the recorder had then been a completely new departure, and one which may have met with opposition from some of the aldermen and from the rulers of the powerful merchant companies. Not until Edward IV’s reign was the city’s recorder to be regularly returned to Parliament.

Remarkably, at the same time as his career in the law took flight and his duties as recorder, assize justice and j.p. on the quorum of five south-eastern counties increased substantially, Danvers also devoted energy to developing interests in the lucrative wool trade. This enterprise may have naturally followed from the sale of wool produced on the Danvers estates in Oxfordshire, and was one he shared with his younger brother and fellow lawyer, Richard. No doubt it was encouraged by their increasingly close links within the mercantile community of London, which were further strengthened when one of their half-brothers, Henry, entered the Mercer’s Company, and a niece married the prominent grocer John Leynham alias Plomer. Substantial shipments of wool were made from the port of London in the names of Robert and Richard Danvers in the 1440s,36 E122/76/40. and such was their commitment to the trade that they were numbered among the merchants of the staple of Calais. In the course of that decade the staplers forwarded sizeable loans to the Crown, Robert Danvers himself being party to one of £320 16s. 4d. made in association with the Londoners John Harowe* and Thomas Chalton. By October 1449 the sum of £10,700 had still not been repaid to the merchants, whose demands resulted in a royal grant that they might recoup the same from subsidies payable on wool shipped over a period of four years. Danvers and his colleagues were permitted to receive the amount still owing to them from the subsidies due on future shipments.37 CPR, 1446-52, p. 316. Even after Robert became a judge he maintained this interest: he and Richard sent more cargoes of wool overseas, notably in the large fleets which left London in May and October 1450 and at the end of 1452,38 E122/73/26, 75/47. and in October 1454, following the seizure by the duke of Burgundy of English merchants’ goods worth £2,000, they, along with two associates, were to be compensated with £343 from subsidies payable on wool shipped at Boston.39 CPR, 1452-61, p. 213. They continued to export wool from London too, at least as late as 1456.40 E122/213/8.

Danvers’s promotion to the judiciary occurred during the chaotic events of the summer of 1450. Divisions among the rulers of London enabled Jack Cade and his followers to enter the city on 3 July and to despoil the houses of Philip Malpas* and others. A royal commission of oyer and terminer had been appointed two days earlier to deal with the malefactors, but when the commissioners, with the recorder Danvers among them, met at the Guildhall on the 4th, they were overawed by Cade and his men and required instead to put on trial the former treasurer of England James Fiennes*, Lord Saye, who had been brought out of the Tower. In the event, the rebels would not allow Saye to stand trial, and put him to death. After Cade was repulsed, the government felt it wisest to offer a general pardon to any of his men who cared to take it, and pacification continued even after the mass of the pardoned rebels had retired to their homes at the end of the month. Despite Cade’s capture and death, disturbances continued to be common in London and the south-east, so on 1 Aug. a new commission of oyer and terminer was appointed, this time to investigate in Kent the oppressions of which the rebels had complained. Chief Justice Fortescue* was not included among the commissioners, and according to contemporary reports a newly-created justice was made one of their number because other justices were regarded by the Kentishmen as themselves guilty of extortion. Since this new judge was Danvers, it may be presumed that he was considered acceptable to the rebels with regard to both character and impartiality. His formal appointment as j.c.p. was made on 14 Aug., and he immediately went ‘forth into Kent with the Lords’,41 English Chron. (Cam. Soc. lxiv), 66-67; John Benet’s Chron. (Cam. Miscellany, xxiv), 200-2; Wars of the English, ii (2), [768]; CPR, 1446-52, pp. 333, 388; R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 641-2, 662-3; Paston Letters ed. Gairdner, ii. 162. there taking a prominent role at sessions at Rochester on 20-22 Aug., at Maidstone on 16-18 Sept., and at Canterbury a few days later. The sessions held in Kent marked the beginning of his participation in the important treason trials of the early 1450s.42 R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Ser. xviii), 221, 228-9, 231-2, 238; KB9/42/1, 2; 85/1, 2; 118/1, 2; 955/1, 2. In addition, on various occasions during the same period he was asked to make awards in property disputes, arranging for their settlement out of court,43 CCR, 1447-54, p. 264; 1454-61, pp. 312-13. and during this decade his name was added to the quorum of the peace commissions in three more counties, most notably that of Oxfordshire, where he was joined on the bench by three of his brothers.

There is nothing in the pattern of Danvers’s appointments to royal commissions during the civil war years of 1459-61 to suggest that he ever failed in his duty to the Lancastrian crown, yet unlike the fiercely partisan Fortescue he proved willing to serve under the Yorkists following their victory at the battle of Northampton in July 1460. Indeed, some political significance may be attached to his appointment to deliver Wallingford castle gaol in September following, as he was the only judge to be so appointed, and the men then being released were supporters of the duke of York who had been incarcerated by the Lancastrians before the battle. He was named as a trier of petitions at the beginning of the Parliament which opened on 7 Oct., and that he was acceptable to the Yorkists is clear from his reappointment as judge within a few weeks of Edward IV’s accession.44 CPR, 1461-7, p. 14; E159/238, brevia Mich. rot. 36. Even so, there is no sign that Danvers was particularly favoured by the new regime, and when his second wife, Katherine, died, shortly before March 1462, it was not he who was granted keeping of the lands she had held of the honour of Wallingford. This wardship, together with the marriages of his three stepdaughters, was bestowed on (Sir) John Wenlock*, recently elevated to the peerage by the new King. Although, together with Katherine, Danvers held by a settlement of 1456 a manor in Dorton, Buckinghamshire, this was also lost to him on her death, for it reverted to the Cottesmore family, so it seems that the marriage had brought him little personal gain.45 CP25(1)/22/124/22; VCH Bucks. iv. 47; CPR, 1461-7, p. 178. There is no evidence that Danvers enjoyed amicable relations with the new Lord Wenlock (whose marriage to his sister Agnes was not to take place until after his death), although according to one contemporary account in 1463 he was appointed to join Wenlock, the chancellor Bishop Neville and the earl of Essex on an embassy to negotiate for mercantile treaties with the duke of Burgundy. However, when, after considerable delays, the ambassadors eventually set out, he was not of their number.46 Wars of the English, ii (2), [781]; C.L. Scofield, Edw. IV, i. 296-7; Foedera ed. Rymer (orig. edn.), xi. 504. Recognition of his services to the Crown came near the end of his life by his knighting at the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville in 1465.

More than 30 years earlier Danvers had begun the piecemeal acquisition of a very substantial landed estate, one derived partly from inheritance but primarily from the investment of the profits of his successful legal practice and trading ventures. His father John, who had a very large family to support, earmarked specific parcels of land for him and his brothers. This seems to have been the purpose of transactions of 1439 whereby John and Robert together bought houses and land in Buckinghamshire, at Woburn, Wycombe and elsewhere, while at the same time other property in Deddington, Oxfordshire, was purchased jointly by John and his next son, Richard.47 CCR, 1435-41, p. 334. It is uncertain at what stage after John’s death in 1449 Robert, as the eldest of the Danvers brothers, came into his full inheritance, although before too long he took possession of the manor of Alkerton, Oxfordshire, bought by his father from Sir Thomas ham,48 VCH Oxon. ix. 47. and the family mansion at Calthorpe was his by 1451. Many of the other properties in his hands at his death had once been his father’s. Yet he did not succeed to his inheritance without difficulty: his stepmother Joan Bruley married Walter Mauntell of Farthinghoe, Northamptonshire, and such serious disagreements arose between them that in November 1451 Mauntell was bound over in 200 marks to do Robert and Richard Danvers no harm, and was further bound in 100 marks to Robert alone to keep the peace towards the latter’s tenants and servants.49 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 318, 321.

Robert’s programme of estate purchase, emulating that of his father, began well before he started to receive a judge’s salary of 110 marks a year, and initially focused on Northamptonshire, where his mother’s family originated. It started with the acquisition in 1431 of a messuage and 40 acres of land in Culworth, a few miles from his home at Banbury, to which he added seven years later the manor there, acquired from the widow of John Corve*. The adjacent manor of Maundevyles and the advowson of Culworth chapel were in his possession by 1454.50 Add. Chs. 38848, 44526-7; CCR, 1435-41, p. 175; 1447-54, p. 500. In the same county he purchased Netherbury in Sulgrave, though not without some trouble with regard to title. In 1439 Robert Arderne* levied a fine of the manor to Danvers and his trustees in fee, and an indenture of May 1445 attested that Arderne had sworne upon the Bible that the property was not subject to entail, and that he and his heirs would never vex Danvers in possession. However, as an affidavit made by Arderne on 12 Feb. 1450 reveals, Danvers delayed handing over the 100 marks owed as the final instalment of the purchase price, and the frustrated Arderne had a ‘spekynge’ with Sir Walter Lucy, to whom he offered to sell the manor for this sum. Although Arderne retracted the offer in the face of Danvers’s determination to have the property, Sir Walter’s son and heir Sir William Lucy* refused to relinquish his claim for three years more, until forced to do so by a judgement in the courts.51 G. Baker, Northants. i. 516. Danvers was evidently able to make full use both of his knowledge of the law and his position on the judiciary to achieve his ends. Yet, as with most of his purchases, the transaction was not straightforward. Often he lent the vendors money, and appears to have foreclosed on mortgages. For instance, for a certain parcel of land at Culworth he paid 80 marks, and lent the vendor another 20. Indeed, money-lending was a prominent feature of the dealings in which he and his brother Richard were engaged.52 C1/43/138.

For the expansion of his landed estate, Danvers also looked to Rutland, although, yet again, complications arose, as his difficulties with the acquisition of the manor of Pickworth reveal. This manor belonged to Sir Henry Inglose*, who stipulated in his will of 1451 that it was to be sold to fulfil his bequests. The executors and feoffees duly conveyed the manor to Danvers’s nominees (headed by Chief Justice Fortescue), by a fine levied in Michaelmas term 1456,53 KB27/779, rot. 74d; CP25(1)/192/9/17. but in the following February Inglose’s son sold it to John Browe* for 300 marks, even though it was not his to sell. Furthermore, according to a petition presented by Danvers, Browe, ‘imagynyng as well by gret mayntenaunce and champertie as by grete routes and riottes’, to intimidate him so that he dare not approach the disputed property, had assembled upwards of 300 men to ambush and threaten him at Pickworth.54 C1/26/618. As a consequence, Browe was obliged to enter into a recognizance for £100 to the King, in 1458, and to find four sureties in £40 for his appearance in Chancery and for his peaceable behaviour towards Danvers.55 CCR, 1454-61, pp. 301-2. In the meantime the judge had supplemented his suit in Chancery by pursuing his rival in his own court, the court of common pleas, for forcible entry into the manor, and, not surprisingly, early in 1460 Browe and his co-defendants were convicted and condemned in damages of £210.56 CP40/794, rot. 309; KB27/799, rot. 1. Even so, Browe did not finally admit defeat for another three years.57 CPR, 1461-7, p. 90; CCR, 1461-8, p. 182.

Besides his considerable investment in land, Danvers had also purchased property more conveniently situated in the proximity of the law-courts. As a residence while he was busy in London and Westminster, he acquired a substantial house in Southwark, with a great garden and several fishponds, which he bought in 1445 in conjunction with his brother-in-law John Fray the chief baron and his brother Richard. This property, later known as ‘Banasters Garden’ (probably because the Danvers family leased part of it to the fishmonger Christopher Banaster), was eventually to be sold by Robert’s half-brother Judge William Danvers, at the end of the century.58 CAD, i. C1200, iii. C3419; vi. C4200; Macnamara, 119-20. Robert may also have bought property in the city of London, such as the tenement in the parish of St. Olave Hart Street which, in association with his brothers Richard and Thomas he dealt with in 1458.59 Corp. London RO, hr 187/11. His final purchases, made in 1466, concerned lands in Aunby in Lincolnshire,60 Add. Ch. 38969. so that at his death he was in possession of substantial estates in six counties, the bulk being in Oxfordshire (centred on the family seat) and Northamptonshire.61 Add. Chs. 38849, 38851-3; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1010. Suffice it to say that his income from these estates, now impossible to estimate, must have been very considerable.

All this, according to a terse statement in the judge’s will, was destined for his son Henry, about whom remarkably little is recorded. All that is known is that together with his father, in 1464 Henry made an agreement with the prior and convent of Canons Ashby whereby the priory leased to them a house adjoining the site of the manor of Culworth for 90 years, receiving in exchange a similar lease of a close.62 Add. Chs. 38844-5. Sir Robert’s will made on 15 Apr. 1467, just two days before he died, gives the impression of having been composed in a hurry. It was very brief, and, for the testament of a lawyer, surprisingly lacking in detail. He simply requested burial next to his first wife, Agnes, in the lady chapel in Holy Cross church in St. Bartholomew’s hospital in West Smithfield, London, and named as executors his sister Agnes, widow of Sir John Fray, his brother Richard and one of his sons-in-law, George Burnaby. The supervisor was Master Simon Buryton, confessor to the King’s household. His niece’s husband, the London alderman Sir John Leynham, and the Exchequer official William Baron* were present to act as witnesses.63 PCC 18 Godyn (PROB11/5, f. 140); copy in Add. Chs. 38846-7. For his house in ‘Paradys’ in the hospital close, see E.C. Roger, ‘Blakberd’s Treasure’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIII, ed. Clark, 103. Although in the will the judge stated that his son Henry was to have all his lands and tenements, Henry must have died at the same time as his father, or else his legitimacy was called into question, for at the inquest held less than four weeks after Sir Robert’s death his heirs were found to be his daughters Alice Burnaby (aged 25), Agnes (aged 22), the wife of Sir Walter Denys, and the ten-year-old Joan, to whom Sir Robert had left £200 for her marriage.64 C140/26/46. This marriage, together with Joan’s wardship, was granted by the Crown on 15 July to Agnes Fray and Richard Danvers, for the modest sum of £20.65 CFR, xx. 203. Little is known about the process whereby Sir Robert had chosen husbands for his two elder daughters, but both came from good families; indeed Denys, the grandson and heir of Sir Gilbert Denys†, was a direct descendant of Cardinal Beaufort. 66 Macnamara, ped. between 102 and 103, 115-16. Denys’s maternal grandmother, Joan, wife of Sir Edward Stradling, was the cardinal’s bastard da.: The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 771-2. The large inheritance was divided between the three coheiresses in equal portions, but within five years of the judge’s death the two oldest and their husbands agreed to sell their shares to their uncle Richard, and after he had arranged the marriage of Joan to Henry Frowyk, son of Thomas II*, he bought out most of her interest too,67 Add. Chs. 38849, 38851-3, 38855-7, 38859, 38861-4; CCR, 1468-76, no. 1010. thus preserving the inheritance for the Danvers family.