DALBY, Robert

No trace of a Robert Dalby has been found. There is the possibility, however, that the MP’s first name was wrongly given on the schedule accompanying the parliamentary return, and that Wallingford was in fact represented by Richard Dalby, one of the King’s servants.

The Richard concerned (not to be confused with Richard Dalby II*) had long been in royal service. In January 1415 Henry V had granted him for life property in Padbury in Buckinghamshire and at Marlborough and Netheravon in Wiltshire, worth £2 13s. 2d. p.a., and this had been confirmed to him shortly after Henry VI’s accession. He was one of the yeomen of the Household who accompanied the King on his voyage to France in 1430, and following their return home he took on the role of ‘yeoman porter of the gate’. As such, in July 1437 he was granted the parker-ship of Rampisham in Dorset, during the minority of the earl of Arundel. To this was added in April 1441 the office of porter of Berkhampstead castle in Hertfordshire for life, with wages of 2d. per day, notwithstanding that he already had the keeping of Hinckley park, Leicestershire, which earned him a daily wage of 1d.1 CPR, 1413-16, p. 277; 1422-9, p. 49; 1436-41, pp. 67, 567; E404/46/302, 303; E403/693, m. 20; 695, m. 7. Dalby was brought closer to Wallingford in May 1445, when he shared in a grant of the farm of land and the ferry at Bablock Hythe, crossing the Isis to the south-west of Oxford, along with the wardship and marriage of the heir to the property, Edward Walwyn, although the value of this grant was diminished a few months later after Walwyn’s inheritance at Yelford was found to be held of Lord Lovell rather than of the King.2 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 344, 461.

If Richard Dalby did indeed represent Wallingford in the Parliament held at Bury St. Edmunds in 1447, he would have been one of many royal servants then sitting in the Commons. On 7 Mar., four days after the dissolution, he surrendered his earliest letters patent regarding lands in Buckinghamshire and Wiltshire, and also those relating to his offices of porter at Berkhampstead and parker at Hinckley, only for all these concessions and offices to be re-granted jointly to him and Richard Waynflete in survivorship. This may mark Dalby’s retirement from active service. In June 1448, because he had reached old age and was succumbing to bodily weakness, he was allotted a pension of ten marks from the royal manor of Eltham. Even so, his last years may have been spent in poverty, as the grants made jointly to him and Waynflete were annulled by the Act of Resumption passed in 1450. He died before July 1453.3 CPR, 1446-52, pp. 50, 157; 1452-61, p. 103.