DARELL, Constantine

Constantine was one of five surviving sons of William Darell, who after coming south from Yorkshire had established himself among the leading landowners of Wiltshire and held office as under treasurer of England. As a younger son, he could not expect to benefit to any large extent from his father’s landed acquisitions, yet sometime after William’s death in the winter of 1450-1 holdings in Collingbourne ‘Valence’ which William had purchased did come into his possession.5 Savernake Estate mss, 9/12/6-10; VCH Wilts. xvi. 133. The eldest of the brothers, George Darell, was retained in 1453 by Richard, duke of York, and made sheriff of Wiltshire in the following year, during a period of the duke’s ascendancy. But Constantine does not seem to have been of the same political persuasion. He was given the office of tronager and pesager in Lynn by the Lancastrian government on 9 May 1459, and secured election for Marlborough to the Parliament summoned to assemble at Coventry on the following 20 Nov. The main purpose of the Parliament was to attaint York and his allies following their treasonable behaviour at Blore Heath and Ludford Bridge. That Constantine was regarded as sympathetic to the Lancastrian side may be implied from circumstantial evidence. The borough of Marlborough formed part of the dower lands of Queen Margaret of Anjou, and his fellow MP was Richard Seymour*, a younger son of (Sir) John Seymour I*, a prominent landowner in the region who was on amicable terms with the chancellor Bishop Waynflete. Richard’s elder brother John Seymour II* accompanied them to Coventry as a knight of the shire.

In the following year the overwhelming Yorkist victory at Northampton led to a swift change of government. Constantine lost his office at Lynn, but his brother George was appointed sheriff of Wiltshire for the second time, and following the accession of Edward IV rose to be keeper of the new King’s great wardrobe, a post he held from 1461 to 1465, before being knighted at the queen’s coronation. Another of their brothers, Richard Darell, made what was on the face of it a very good marriage into the ranks of the nobility. By the summer of 1463 he had wed Margaret Beaufort, the daughter of the late Edmund, duke of Somerset, and widow of Humphrey Stafford, entitled ‘earl of Stafford’, the son and heir apparent of Humphrey, duke of Buckingham. Both her father and husband had been killed at the first battle of St. Albans in 1455. It has been suggested, without citing concrete evidence, that the Countess Margaret was an ‘imbecile’, and perhaps for this reason Richard placed her to board with his mother Elizabeth at Littlecote on 1 Aug. 1463, only to fail to pay his mother the agreed amount of one mark a week for the 45 weeks before the latter died in the following June.6 Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. n.s. iv. 141. The matter may have rankled; neither Richard nor our MP Constantine was mentioned in Elizabeth’s will, although she left generous bequests to her other sons.7 C140/12/13; PCC 4 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 31v-32).

Nevertheless, it served the interests of all five brothers to join together to petition the Crown for possession of the manor of Capel in Kent, which they claimed to have inherited from their father, asserting their rights in gavelkind. They pointed out that the manor had been in their father’s possession until in 1414 royal inquiries had found that Sir Thomas Shelley† had held it at the time of his forfeiture in 1400. In April 1464 the King had granted it, wrongly they said, to their cousin William Darell. Further inquiries held four years later found in the brothers’ favour, but this finding was contested by the King’s attorney, and the outcome is not known.8 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 70-71; CIMisc. viii. 398. Meanwhile, Constantine had been overlooked for advancement by the Yorkist administration, or perhaps he chose to keep in the background. He declined to take up knighthood, being fined 53s. 4d. for failing to do so in 1465.9 E405/43, rot. 3d. In the locality he continued his association with Sir John Seymour,10 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Marquis of Ailesbury mss, 1300/147. and this link between their two families was strengthened by the marriage of his niece Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Darell, to Sir John’s grandson and heir John Seymour (d.1491).11 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 768.

Constantine’s own marriage, probably contracted in the early 1460s, made him a landowner of greater consequence than hitherto. His wife Joan was the only child of the former recorder of Southampton, William Chamberlain, a veteran of 11 Parliaments, and brought with her a considerable number of properties in her home town.12 Southampton City Archs., Soton. terrier of 1454, SC13/1/1; C139/120/43. Furthermore, she held dower as the widow of Richard Holt, an apprentice-at-law and j.p. in Hampshire who had died in 1458, this endowment including messuages and land in Alton, Wheatley and Kingsley, and the manors of Belanney and Brome, which her former husband had inherited from his father and namesake. The marriages of Joan’s daughters Christine (b.1444) and Elizabeth (b.1448) respectively to Edward Berkeley† of Beverstone and John Pound†, gave her new husband Darell further connexions of note among the Hampshire gentry,13 CCR, 1454-61, p. 147; Add. Ch. 17434; C139/169/32. although it is not clear whether he took any part in arranging these matches, which might have been agreed before their father Holt died.14 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1255; Hants RO, Daly mss, 5M50/1713; VCH Hants, ii. 516.

Constantine emerged from relative obscurity to be appointed as a commissioner of gaol delivery at Old Sarum in August and September 1470, just before Edward IV was forced into exile by the rebellious Clarence and Warwick, but his appointment to a similar commission in 1473, after Edward regained the throne, suggests that he was deemed acceptable to the restored regime. He and his brother Sir George witnessed transactions completed by Richard Erle* in favour of their nephew William Kirkby later that same year,15 CCR, 1468-76, no. 1143. and together with two other brothers he was enfeoffed in 1474 of manors in Wiltshire for Thomas Waryn (d.1493).16 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 873. As a consequence of his first marriage Sir Richard Darell was stepfather to Duke Henry of Buckingham, and he remained in close contact with the young duke throughout the 1470s, to the extent of serving him as a councillor. Yet although, like the duke, he was present at Richard III’s coronation in 1483, there is no sign that he joined him in open rebellion against the new King that autumn.17 CP, ii. 389; C. Rawcliffe, Staffords, 147, 226; Coronation of Ric. III ed. Sutton and Hammond, 332 – where, however, the Darell brothers are wrongly stated to be the sons of ‘Sir William Darell of Capel, Kent’. Perhaps significantly, Constantine Darell and his wife saw fit to take out royal pardons on 8 Mar. 1484, but as the pardons referred specifically to Joan’s father and former husband it seems likely that their concern was to protect her landed interests, rather than to defend themselves on a charge of participation in Buckingham’s rebellion.18 C67/51, m. 11.

In the following year, on 2 June 1485, the couple made a settlement of Darell’s lands in Collingbourne ‘Valance’ and elsewhere in the Wiltshire hundred of Kinwardstone, whereby they would hold them for their lives with remainder in tail-male to their sons Marmaduke and William.19 Savernake Estate mss, 9/12/12. In another settlement, made on the occasion of the prestigious marriage of Constantine’s niece Margaret (daughter of Sir Richard Darell and his wife Margaret Beaufort), to Sir James Audley, the son and heir of John Audley*, Lord Audley, Constantine was granted a reversionary interest in the manor of Paulton in Hampshire should the issue of the young couple fail.20 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 646; CP, i. 342. But he never inherited the manor, for when Sir Richard died in 1489 his heir was his gds. John Audley, aged six. Lord Audley was Constantine’s co-feoffee of the Seymour manor of Hatch Beauchamp, Somerset, which was settled in jointure on Constantine’s niece Elizabeth on her marriage to the Seymour heir,21 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 768; CPR, 1494-1509, p. 7. and it may be the case that his connexion with Audley also smoothed the way for his acceptance by the new regime under Henry VII, whom the baron served as a councillor. Our MP was twice appointed sheriff of Wiltshire in the 1490s.

Shortly before the second appointment, in October 1495, Darell and his wife were engaged in transactions regarding property Joan had inherited in Southampton.22 Black Bk. Soton. ii (Soton. Rec. Soc. 1912), 162-3. This may have been in preparation for her death, which occurred on 6 Dec. The heirs to the Holt property of her former husband were found to be her daughter Elizabeth Pound and grand-daughter Laura Berkeley, the countess of Ormond; while the heir to her own Chamberlain inheritance was her son Marmaduke Darell, aged over 30.23 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1255. However, Marmaduke died a few years later, in 1502, in his father’s lifetime.24 CFR, xxii. nos. 718, 749. Our MP made a brief will on 5 Feb. 1508, and died before the following 11 Apr.,25 PCC 34 Adeane (PROB11/15, f. 270d). leaving his estate to a namesake who, being later described as his ‘kinsman’ rather than son, may have been his grandson.26 C146/206. Constantine and his wife were commemorated by a monumental brass in the chancel of St. Mary’s church in Collingbourne, where he had requested burial.27 VCH Wilts. xvi. 139; Kite, 38.