DAUBENEY, Sir Giles

Originating from Breton Aubigné near Rennes, the Daubeneys (or d’Aubignés) were established at South Ingleby in Lincolnshire by the early thirteenth century. Two centuries later, the family’s landholdings extended across southern England and the Midlands, and the Daubeneys played a regular part in the governance of their shires, as well as in national affairs more broadly. From 1295 to 1305 Sir Elias Daubeney was summoned to Parliament in his own right, and although none of his direct descendants was to receive a similar summons until 1486, the intervening generations (with the sole exception of Sir Elias’s son and heir, Sir Ralph) sat in the Commons.10 CP, iv. 93-99; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 756.

Giles was born as one of six children at the family seat of Kempston, and although he was a younger son, his position in the family was deemed of sufficient importance for his godparents to ensure that the occasion of his baptism was recorded in the missal of the church of All Saints in the Bedfordshire manor.11 CIPM, xxi. 558. When Daubeney’s father died on 22 Aug. 1403, his elder brother John was alive, and for a time it seemed as though his expectations would not exceed the 40 marks that his father had settled upon him in his will.12 Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xvi), 4-5. John was taken into the King’s wardship, and before long his custody was granted to Queen Joan.13 CPR, 1401-5, p. 263; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 109-10, 112. However, six years later, on 24 Sept. 1409, John died while still under age,14 CIPM, xix. 754-8; xx. 564-6. and as next heir, 14-year-old Giles replaced him as the queen’s ward.15 Reg. Bubwith, i. 216; Feudal Aids, vi. 506. Seven years later, he proved his age before the escheator of Bedfordshire and was granted seisin of his inheritance.16 CCR, 1413-19, pp. 328-9. The lands which should then have come into his possession included the family seat of ‘Dawbeneys maner’ in Kempston, the manors of South Petherton, Barrington and Chillington in Somerset, South Ingleby in Lincolnshire, and Fawton, Trenay, Polruan and Essey in St. Neot’s, together with the hereditary bailiwick of the hundred of West, all in Cornwall, as well as further lands in Nottinghamshire, altogether thought to be worth in excess of £150 p.a.17 CIPM, xviii. 731-6; VCH Som. iv. 176; VCH Beds. iii. 298-9; C139/121/26. Yet, in the immediate term Daubeney’s inheritance was much diminished by the survival not only of his mother (dowered with a third of her husband’s estates and in May 1411 said to have been abducted from Barrington by John Ketherowe, whom she married without royal licence),18 CIPM, xix. 754-9, 904; xxi. 553-7; Feudal Aids, vi. 506; KB27/602, rex rot. 20; KB145/4/13/1. On account of Margaret’s breach of the terms of her dower settlement in remarrying without royal licence, the Crown laid claim to her third of the Daubeney lands, but awarded her custody until the dispute should be settled. As a consequence, in Dec. 1411 she procured a retrospective licence: CFR, xiii. 222-3; CPR, 1408-13, p. 354. but also of his dead brother’s widow, Elizabeth, a daughter of Roger, Lord Scrope of Bolton.19 The marriage between John and Elizabeth which Margaret Daubeney had agreed with Henry, Lord Fitzhugh, in July 1409 had lasted barely two months. Following John’s death, Elizabeth married Thomas (d.1421), s. and h. of John Goldington† of Thele, Herts., and then Warin Waldegrave. She died in 1440: CCR, 1405-9, p. 517; 1409-13, p. 42; Feudal Aids, vi. 506; CIPM, xix. 759; CP, iv. 99; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 205; CFR, xvii. 164, 178-9.

Even before succeeding to his inheritance, Daubeney appears to have presided over an independent household at Barrington, where in March 1415 he was granted licence to have mass said ‘in a low voice’ in the presence of his wife and servants.20 Reg. Bubwith, i. 203. The episcopal licence offers no clues as to this wife’s identity, but it is probable that she was Joan, a daughter of Philip, Lord Darcy, to whom Giles had been betrothed at a young age. Not long after succeeding to his father’s lands, Daubeney went to fight in Henry V’s French wars, and it was probably while on campaign there that he was knighted.21 DKR, xliv. 623; Oxf. DNB, ‘Daubeney fam.’. His martial exploits continued into the final months of Henry V’s life, and it was only after his return to England, probably sometime after the King’s death, that Giles assumed his family’s traditional place in local administration. As Kempston and much of the family property in Bedfordshire formed part of the dowers of Margaret Ketherowe and Elizabeth Scrope, he initially made his home in Somerset. Here, he found himself drawn into the circle of the steward of the King’s household, Sir Walter, later Lord Hungerford†, perhaps through the good offices of his mother’s putative kinsman, Sir Thomas Beauchamp*. Alongside Beauchamp, Daubeney was returned to Parliament as knight of the shire for Somerset in 1425, and four years later he served a second spell in the Commons alongside John Stourton I*, another of Lord Hungerford’s connexions, one of whose daughters Daubeney’s son and heir would later marry.22 CCR, 1429-35, p. 67; Som. Archs., Helyer mss, DD/WHh/966-7. In the intervening period, Sir Giles served as sheriff of Somerset and Dorset (presiding over the shire elections of 1426 in both counties), as well as being appointed to a commission to inquire into payments to the Crown outstanding in Somerset.

Among his Somerset neighbours, Daubeney was well connected, being named as a feoffee by important local landowners such as Lady Eleanor Hull (mother of the prominent soldier, Sir Edward Hull*), Robert Warre, esquire, and James Luttrell.23 KB27/782, rot. 23d; Bristol RO, Ashton Court deeds, AC/D/1/65; Som. Archs., Sanford mss, DD/SF/1578; CCR, 1435-41, p. 6. Particularly close, however, were his ties with Sir Thomas Beauchamp, with whom he secured a royal grant of the wardship of the estates of the latter’s son-in-law, John Kendale, in 1422, and for whom he acted in land settlements along with other close associates such as Ralph Bush* of Caundle Haddon (a fellow Member of Daubeney’s second Parliament). In view of the more disreputable side of Beauchamp’s character, this was no routine business, and by the autumn of 1429 Daubeney and his co-feoffees found themselves dragged into the dispute over the title deeds to the manors of Ninehead Flory and Withiel Flory that Sir Thomas was said to have forged.24 CFR, xiv. 419; xv. 129, 154; E159/199, brevia Easter rot. 20; 206, brevia Mich. rot. 33; 221, brevia Mich. rot. 14d; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 74, 187-9. Beauchamp, who in his earlier life had found himself in the Tower for his lollard sympathies, may also be credited with bringing Daubeney to the attention of Sir Thomas Brooke* (a man of equally suspect religious views), who named him among the feoffees of his seat at Weycroft, where the enclosure of his park had brought him into conflict with the powerful Sir William Bonville*.25 CPR, 1422-9, p. 400; The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 377.

Daubeney himself does not appear to have been a litigious man, and rarely came into conflict with the law. If in 1437 he saw a need to avail himself of the general pardon offered at Henry VI’s formal coming of age, this may have been as much a precaution to protect himself from future challenges in the law courts, as born of any genuine sense of wrongdoing.26 C67/38, m. 20; E159/213, brevia Trin. rot. 13d. Among the few quarrels in which he can be shown to have become embroiled was one with Nicholas Moleyns over the title to property in South Petherton. An inquisition taken at the time of the death of Moleyns’s father in 1387 had found the Daubeneys to be feudal overlords of the holdings concerned, but after proving his age in 1403 Nicholas had successfully challenged the escheator’s findings. On succeeding to his lands, Daubeney had once again attempted to enforce what he regarded as his legitimate rights, and by early 1425 Moleyns had begun litigation in the Westminster law courts.27 CP40/656, rot. 327; CIPM, xvi. 602-5; xviii. 737, 858; Peds. Plea Rolls, ed. Wrottesley, 321-2. Similarly, in October 1442 Daubeney was suing Nicholas Davy, a Petherton husbandman who practiced as an attorney in the court of common pleas, for the sum of 100 marks, owing to him under the terms of a bond sealed by Davy in 1439. Davy claimed to have sealed this bond under duress, but a jury eventually found in Sir Giles’s favour. This was not, however, the end of the matter, for in January 1444 proceedings recommenced, when Davy procured a writ of error.28 CP40/728, rot. 339v. An accusation that during Daubeney’s shrievalty in Buckinghamshire in 1431-2 he had been guilty of packing a jury in favour of Thomas Cheyne and his wife Eleanor, stands isolated in his record, and may have owed more to the zeal of defending counsel than to Daubeney’s corruption.29 JUST1/1543, rot. 45.

The death of Daubeney’s mother in 1420 allowed him to recover some of the lands which had been alienated from the family since his father died, but the survival of his brother’s widow meant that his holdings still remained diminished by her dower.30 CFR, xiv. 332, 361; xvii. 164, 178-9; C139/104/41. As Elizabeth’s relative youth threatened a long survival, Daubeney improved his fortunes after the death of his first wife by contracting a profitable marriage to Mary, the eldest daughter and coheiress of the Nottinghamshire landowner Simon Leek, which brought him possession, inter alia, of the Leeks’ principal manor of Cotham.31 CCR, 1429-35, p. 308; Notts. RO, Portland mss, 157DD/P/8/3-4; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 586. The marriage produced a daughter, and Cotham thus remained in Daubeney’s hands by courtesy at least during his lifetime, even though Mary predeceased him by three years. The valuable Leek inheritance shifted the balance of Daubeney’s possessions northward, and for a brief period he began to play a part in midland society. In the course of 1436 he was appointed to royal commissions in both Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, and around the same time he increasingly associated with his fellows in those counties. In July 1436 he headed the list of witnesses to a land settlement by his Lincolnshire neighbour Sir John Gra*, and about the same time he was associated with his brothers-in-law Richard Willoughby*, John Markham, and Hugh Hercy* in the defence of their wives’ inheritance in the Westminster law courts.32 CCR, 1441-7, p. 207; CP40/701, rot. 340. The death of Daubeney’s sister-in-law Elizabeth on 24 July 1440 tipped the balance of his estates back to the south-west, and from that point onwards he once more became active in local government in Somerset, serving on a string of royal commissions in the county from late that year until his death.33 C139/104/41. The recovery of his full patrimony combined with his wife’s inheritance made enough of a difference to his income to persuade him for the only recorded time in his life to offer the Crown a loan in support of the French wars. He had been personally approached by letters of privy seal for a contribution of £40 in 1436, but in the event did not offer the lesser sum of £20 until plagued for a loan by three successive sets of royal commissioners within five months between March and August 1442. It is tempting to speculate to what extent his own experience of serving as a commissioner to raise such a loan two years earlier played its part in swaying him into acquiescence.34 PPC, iv. 328; E401/780, m. 13; E403/747, m. 4; CPR, 1436-41, p. 504.

Following Mary Leek’s death in 1443 Daubeney married a third time. This last wife’s parentage has not been discovered, but there is no suggestion that she was an heiress in her own right. Their marriage apparently produced a son, but did not last long, for in early 1446 Daubeney fell terminally ill, and he died on 11 Jan. at Barrington. He had made a will the previous 3 Mar., written with his own hand and sealed with his armorial seal. Its provisions were conventional. He asked to be buried before the Lady altar in the church of St. Peter at his principal manor of South Petherton, to which he left a bequest of plate and vestments. A similar legacy was destined for the church of Barrington, while the Charterhouse in Selwood and the canonical house at Staverdale, which had granted Sir Giles letters of confraternity, were to have 20s. and 6s. 8d. respectively. Daubeney asked that 1,000 masses should be said for his soul as soon as possible after his death, and requested additional prayers and masses for the souls of his first two wives, his parents, his uncles Thomas and William Daubeney, and his grandmother Eleanor in the churches of South Petherton and Kempston for a period of three years after his death. He provided for gifts of money and beds to poor men, and left a noble to the prisoners in Ilchester gaol. Other bequests went to the friars at Ilchester and Bridgwater, and to the nuns of Brodholme and Shopwell. He bequeathed ten marks towards the foundation of an almshouse for four poor men, and eight marks for the schooling of four poor clerks. To Alice, his wife, he left a diamond ring and various items of plate, including a gilt cup set with precious stones, a great piece called ‘the Rose’ and a powder box of silver, as well as various household goods, corn and livestock, including two of his best amblers. Daubeney’s son and heir, 22-year-old William, was left a quantity of plate and household goods, including ‘a chafour to seth fyssh ynne’, but (in view of his responsibilities as head of a knightly family) also his father’s armour and two best horses. For William’s younger brother Giles, a mere infant, Daubeney provided that various items of plate, as well as ‘a dowblet of defens’, a habergeon, a sword, a poleaxe and a helmet, should be placed in a large standard or chest, and entrusted to the custody of ‘some sure Abbay’, the keys to be kept by the boy’s mother and his godfather, William More, until he should reach the age of 16. Also remembered were Sir Giles’s brother Thomas, his daughter Joan, and a number of his friends and servants. He settled the lands that he had purchased in his lifetime on his younger son by his third wife, and as an afterthought on his deathbed left the residue of his moveable goods to Alice herself, whom he appointed among his executors. Probate was granted in February 1446, and the execution had been completed by 2 Mar.35 Reg. Stafford, ff. 134-5.

Daubeney’s tomb in the church of South Petherton, which shows him on a fine double brass alongside his first wife, and was thus probably commissioned in his life time (a separate brass for his second wife had probably been put in place at the time of her death in 1443), bears the epitaph

Sis testis Christe, quod non iacit lapis iste

Corpus ut ornetur, set spiritus memoretur.

Quisquis eris qui transieris, sta, perlege, plora.

Sum quod eris, fueramque quod es, pro me precor ora.36 A.B. Connor, Mon. Brasses Som., 179-81.

Daubeney was succeeded by his elder son William, who had livery of his lands in February 1446.37 C139/121/26; CFR, xviii. 22; xix. 131; E159/223, brevia Trin. rot. 4. He would later represent Bedfordshire in the Parliament of February 1449, while his son (another Giles†) was returned for Somerset in 1478, at the beginning of a highly distinguished career which saw him rise to be Henry VII’s chamberlain and lieutenant of Calais, and summoned to Parliament as a peer in every Parliament of the first Tudor monarch’s reign. Daubeney’s daughter married the Nottinghamshire knight Sir Robert Markham†, a relation by marriage of her mother, Mary Leek, and through their marriage the Leek family seat of Cotham eventually passed to the Markhams.38 Markham’s uncle, Sir John Markham c.j.K.b., had married Joan Daubeney’s aunt Margaret Leek: Payling, 40, 53. His widow, Alice, married again shortly after his death. By her second husband, whose identity is obscure, she had three daughters, who (since her son by Sir Giles had died young) became her eventual heirs. She died in 1455.39 CCR, 1441-7, p. 330; 1454-61, pp. 19-20; E159/232, recorda Trin. rot. 17d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 254; CFR, xix. 99.