DAUBENEY, William

A member of a distinguished and wealthy family, Daubeney died at a relatively early age. As a result, he was less prominent than his father, Sir Giles Daubeney, and his son’s career easily eclipsed his own. Sir Giles died on 11 Jan. 1446,3 CIPM, xxvi. 389. having made a will in which he bequeathed his armour, two best horses and a quantity of plate and household goods to his heir.4 Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Stafford, ff. 134-5. It is impossible to tell whether Daubeney ever wore the armour on the battlefield, for lack of evidence that he campaigned in France like his father. He had attained his majority when Sir Giles died, but did not come fully into his own until late in life since his stepmother, Alice, survived until 1455.5 C139/157/20. Daubeney’s inheritance comprised substantial estates spread over several counties, including manors at Kempston in Bedfordshire, South Petherton, Barrington and Chillington in Somerset, South Ingleby in Lincolnshire and Fawton, Trenay, Polruan and Essay in St. Neot’s, Cornwall, as well as the hereditary bailiwick of the hundred of West in the latter county. At the beginning of the century the Daubeney lands had been valued at over £150 p.a., although while she lived Alice retained in dower a third part of Kempston as well as extensive lands and rents in Somerset, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.6 CIPM, xviii. 731-6; xxvi. 389-92; CFR, xviii. 222-3; xix. 131; CCR, 1435-41, p. 330; 1454-61, pp. 19-20. Daubeney also came into property through his wife, another Alice, who brought him the manor of Pendomer in Somerset.7 Helyer mss, DD/WHh/966-7. The match was almost certainly contracted within a west-country nexus headed by Walter, Lord Hungerford†, since both Sir Giles Daubeney and Alice’s father John Stourton (who sat together in the Parliament of 1425 as the knights of the shire for Somerset) were members of the Hungerford affinity.

Unable to take full possession of Kempston while his stepmother was still alive, Daubeney spent much of his time on his estates in south-west England, although his family’s links with Bedfordshire allowed him to represent that county in Parliament, just as his paternal grandfather, Sir Giles Daubeney†, had done before him. It was as ‘of Barrington’ that he and his young wife received a royal pardon in September 1446, and he obtained a charter, granting him and his heirs the right to hold a fair on his manor at South Petherton every Midsummer, in February 1448.8 C67/39, m. 28; CChR, vi. 100. He took part in his only known parliamentary election as an attestor in Somerset, and it was in Cornwall that he served as sheriff. In February 1458 he received a royal pardon, as ‘late sheriff of Cornwall’, for any murders, rapes, rebellions, felonies and other offences committed before the previous 7 Dec., and for any fines or other financial penalties imposed on him before 1 Sept. 1454.9 E159/235, brevia Mich. rot. 6. Whether he was actually guilty of serious misdemeanours, or whether the pardon had any political connotations, is impossible to say. There is no evidence of his having played any part in the civil war battles and campaigns of the latter years of Henry VI’s reign.

Nothing more is known about Daubeney’s activities and whereabouts in his latter years, save that in December 1459 he witnessed the endowment of a chantry chapel which the late Sir William Palton* had founded in the parish church of Croscombe, Somerset.10 C147/155. The panella files for the ct. of KB reveal that in Easter term 1460 William Daubeney was suing William Coches there for assaulting him at Islington on 3 Apr. that year (KB146/6/38/3/19), but a search of the plea rolls has failed to find any record of this suit. In any case, it is likely that the plaintiff was another William Daubeney, possibly the man who served as clerk of the King’s jewels in the latter years of Edward IV’s reign and became a friend of William Caxton: E403/845-8; E405/65-71; A.F. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, Ric. III’s Bks., 237. Daubeney died just over a year later, on 2 Jan. 1461. There is no record of his burial place and his will (assuming he made one) has not survived. Within a fortnight of his death, the Crown granted the wardship of Giles, his young son and heir, to Alice Daubeney’s brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Kyriel*, an experienced soldier who had thrown in his lot with the Yorkists the previous summer. The victorious Lancastrians executed Sir Thomas after the second battle of St. Albans in February 1461 but his widow, Alice’s elder sister Cecily, managed to obtain a new grant of the wardship in the following April. The widowed Alice Daubeney found a new husband in the Somerset esquire Robert Hill†, whom she married in 1462, although she and Hill were sufficiently close in terms of kinship to require a papal dispensation to become husband and wife.11 CPR, 1452-61, p. 641; 1461-7, p. 6; CPL, xii. 133. Giles Daubeney, who came of age and took livery of his inheritance in 1473, enjoyed a far more distinguished career than his father and ended his days as Lord Daubeney, a trusted servant of Henry VII.