DODDINGSELLES, Sir Edward

The family of Doddingselles, originally from Flanders, had been established at Long Itchington since the early thirteenth century, when Sir Hugh Doddingselles (d.1239) married Basilia, one of the two sisters and coheirs of John de Limesy (d.1193). This brought the family an extensive estate in several counties, soon augmented by the acquisition of part of the lands of the other coheiress, but thereafter they failed to add to it over the generations.4 J. Bridges, Northants. ii. 434; R. Clutterbuck, Herts. iii. 121-3; I.J. Sanders, English Baronies, 29-30; Dugdale, i. 343-4; CIPM, iii. 286. Indeed, the estate diminished through two important losses. The manors of Solihull and Maxstoke were settled on William Doddingselles, the youngest son of Sir Hugh and Basilia, and in the 1290s the property descended to his four grand-daughters; later, in 1358, the manor of Cavendish in Suffolk was sold to John Cavendish, later chief justice of King’s bench.5 VCH Warws. iv. 138, 218; Dugdale, ii. 939-41; CCR, 1358-61, p. 136. This apparent lack of ambition on the family’s part is reflected by their failure to play the part in local affairs commensurate with their wealth. Strikingly, none of them is recorded as serving as either sheriff or MP. The reason may partly lie in the scattered nature of the family patrimony, which, in addition to the manor of Long Itchington, consisted of manors at Broadwell in Oxfordshire, Pirton in Hertfordshire and Epperstone in Nottinghamshire, with lands at Morcott in Rutland.6 These lands were valued at £70 p.a. in the inqs. taken on the death of our MP’s father: CIPM, xv. 897-901. This was an undervaluation. In 1436 Doddingselles was assessed at an annual income of £90: E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 20d. None the less, their principal manor was a large one, sufficient in itself to give them an assured place in Warwickshire politics, and their lack of office-holding is remarkable for a family which consistently supported the knightly rank.

The family’s lack of pretensions is reflected in those who stood as godparents when Edward Doddingselles was baptized in the church of Wappenbury, a few miles from the family home at Long Itchington. Two minor local gentry, Edward Metley of Hunningham, a lawyer, and John Broun of Napton on the Hill, stood as his godfathers; his godmother, Clemence, the wife of George Burneby of Watford in Northamptonshire, was drawn from slightly further afield but was not from the leading gentry families of that county.7 CIPM, xx. 267. When his father died Edward was still ten years short of his majority, the third successive head of the family to succeed as a minor. A grant of his wardship was made with remarkable speed: on 8 Dec. 1403, just four days after his father’s death and a month before the issue of the routine writs to inquire into the family estates, the Crown committed his marriage and his manor of Pirton to the custody of John Cockayne, then chief baron of the Exchequer. Nine days later this grant was subverted when the marriage and all the Doddingselles lands (saving his mother’s life interest) were granted to the King’s younger son, John. New letters patent dated 16 Feb. 1404 marked a compromise: Cockayne and three lesser men were to hold the lands and marriage to the use of the King’s son. Five days later, Edward’s mother was assigned dower with a generosity which devalued the wardship and potentially threatened the interests of the heir: she was assigned the manor of Long Itchington subject to the payment of an annual rent of £4 to the guardians and then to the heir on his coming of age.8 CPR, 1401-5, pp. 331, 355, 374; CCR, 1402-5, pp. 215-16.

The young Edward presumably grew up in Cockayne’s household, probably at Radwell in Hertfordshire and not at Bury Hatley, which Cockayne did not acquire until 1417; and it was no doubt while still a minor that he was married to his guardian’s daughter, Margaret. He had passed his 22nd birthday before the writ for his proof of age was issued on 10 July 1414.9 In five of the inqs. taken after his father’s death his birth is dated to 4 Mar. 1389, but the sixth gives 17 Feb. 1393: CIPM, xviii. 897-902. This writ was acted on with reasonable expediency – the inquisition was held at Southam on the following 6 Aug. – but it was not until 18 June 1415 that the escheators of five counties were ordered to give him seisin of his patrimony (saving the interests of his mother).10 CIPM, xx. 267; CCR, 1413-19, p. 223. The delay is hard to explain, but, whatever the reason, Dodingselles did not tarry to enjoy his lands. On the same day as he was awarded seisin he sued out letters of protection as about to depart for France in the retinue of Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset. It is not certain whether he participated in the following campaign (a later inquisition places him in England as late as 1 Sept. 1415), but, if he did so in the earl’s retinue, he missed the battle of Agincourt, serving instead in the garrison at Harfleur, where Beaufort was captain.11 DKR, xliv. 568; CIMisc. vii. 293. His later activities as a soldier are poorly documented, but it seems he divided the rest of Henry V’s reign between France and his native county. He was a knight by 31 July 1416 and it is likely that he received the honour at Harfleur. In May 1418 his military experience was recognized by appointment to a commission of array in Warwickshire. Two years later, in January 1420, his was one of 13 names submitted to the royal council by the county j.p.s. as those most fit for military service. Unlike many of the others so named, he was quick to respond to this call: on the following 12 Feb. he indented to serve in France for a year with four men-at-arms, including himself, and 12 archers, and duly mustered at Southampton on 6 May.12 E28/97/32B; E404/35/279; DKR, xliv. 616; E101/49/36, m. 5

A more personal matter engaged Doddingselles’s attention in these years. On 1 Sept. 1415 he allegedly entered the valuable manor of Solihull, lost to his family so many years before, claiming it as an escheat after the death of Sybil, widow of Sir Hugh Despenser (d.1401). She had only a life interest in the manor; the reversion was vested in Sir Hugh’s sister and heir, Anne, and her heirs by a final concord levied in 1404. Our MP had little chance of making good his ambitious claim. A final concord levied in 1352 had vested the ultimate remainder in the right heirs of Anne’s father, Sir Hugh Despenser (d.1374), represented in 1415 by this Sir Hugh’s great-niece, Isabel, wife of Richard Beauchamp, Lord Abergavenny. On 31 July 1416, sitting before a royal commission concerning concealments, a jury laid down the facts about the manor, stating the rival claims of Doddingselles, Isabel Despenser and the Crown, which could claim through the forfeiture of Isabel’s father, Thomas, Lord Despenser. The latter claim prevailed.13 CIMisc. vii. 293-4; VCH Warws. iv. 219; CFR, xiv. 224-6.

Sir Edward was back in England by 12 Feb. 1422, when he was appointed to the bench in his native county even though Long Itchington was still in the hands of his mother. This, it seemed, was to mark the beginning of an active career in local administration, an impression strengthened by his election to Parliament on 9 Apr. 1425.14 The election appears to have been poorly attended, even by the standards of Warws. where the leading gentry rarely appear among the attestors. Only 10 are named, including the two burgesses returned for Warwick, Nicholas Rody* and Roger Wootton II*: C219/13/3. His position was further improved three years later when his elderly mother passed away and he finally had seisin of the family’s principal property.15 CFR, xv. 188, 213; CIPM, xxiii. 21. He also formed associations with some influential men. In 1429, for example, he was joint defendant in an assize of novel disseisin with Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, and the noted soldier, Sir Thomas Rempston†; and in the same year he was witness to a deed by which land was granted to John, duke of Bedford, and others, probably in the interest of John Catesby*.16 CFR, xv. 203; JUST1/1537, rot. 6; CAD, iv. A8342. Thus far his career had been entirely conventional for a man of his rank, and yet it soon took an unexpected turn. Over the next few years he gradually faded from the politics of Warwickshire, losing his place on the county bench in 1433 and not serving on any ad hoc commission of local government between 1418 and 1455. No obvious explanation presents itself.

The majority of references to Doddingselles in the late 1420s and 1430s refer to debt. In 1425 his father-in-law, Justice Cockayne, was pursuing him for a debt of 100 marks. This sum was still outstanding when the justice drew up his will on 10 Feb. 1428, for, under its terms, our MP was to be pardoned 20 marks on condition that he be ‘bonis et fidelis’ husband to Margaret. This was hardly a ringing endorsement of his qualities as a husband.17 CP40/658, rot. 456; PCC 12 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 91d). As late as 1440 Cockayne’s executors were pursuing him for the remaining 80 marks: CP40/716, rot. 36. Later, in 1432 the sheriff of Northamptonshire was ordered to produce him in Chancery to answer Thomas Rogers, a servant of Thomas Haseley†, the influential Chancery clerk, for a debt of about £8; and in both 1435 and 1440 he was obliged to sue out pardons of outlawry for failure to answer pleas of debt.18 C244/7/71; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 12, 328. Such evidence implies that his finances were not in good order. And yet it is hard to attribute his lack of recorded activity to this alone. Indeed, there is good evidence that he was responsible for the building of a new manor-house at Long Itchington: this suggests that the apparent financial embarrassment of the 1430s was a passing phase.19 Trans. Birmingham. Arch. Soc. lxxix. 7-8. It would be mere speculation to attribute his obscurity to disability, and it is more likely that it arose out of personal choice and a family tradition of disengagement from local government.

Provision for his several children was one of Sir Edward’s main concerns in the 1430s and 1440s. On 8 June 1434 he entered into a bond in the large sum of 400 marks to Philippa, widow of John Mallory* of Newbold Revel (a dozen miles to the north of Long Itchington), as surety that he would settle lands with an annual value of 16 marks upon his son, Edward, and her daughter, Isabel, and the couple’s issue. Isabel’s sister, Philippa, was already the wife of Eustace Burneby, son of our MP’s godmother, and this existing connexion probably explains the match. There can be no doubt that Edward was Doddingselles’s eldest son – a jointure worth over £10 p.a. would have overstretched Sir Edward if settled for the marriage of a younger son – nor that he did not long survive the marriage.20 CCR, 1429-35, p. 313; P.J.C. Field, Sir Thomas Malory, 85-86. C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity, 215, wrongly identifies him as a younger son. By the end of the decade our MP had found a wife for his new heir, Edward’s younger brother, John. On 26 Oct. 1439 he had royal licence to settle his manor of Broadwell in Oxfordshire on John and Margaret, daughter of Thomas Hugford*, and their issue.21 CPR, 1436-41, p. 343. Hugford, Doddingselles’s fellow Warwickshire MP in 1425, was one of the principal servants of the earl of Warwick, a political connexion that made his daughter an attractive bride for a family of higher social rank. Again, however, the match was broken by death, and Sir Edward had to look for a bride for his new heir, Gerard, at the same time as he himself was seeking a new wife. On 16 Feb. 1446 he secured royal licence to make a resettlement of Broadwell on Gerard, Gerard’s wife, Margaret, and his son’s issue. This appears to have been a double marriage with our MP marrying the aunt of his new daughter-in-law: on the same day he had licence to settle part of the manor of Pirton on himself and his wife, Alice, and his issue.22 CPR, 1441-6, pp. 406, 409. The precise identity of the two brides is uncertain, but there is strong evidence that they were from a prominent Coventry family. One of those employed by Sir Edward to make the relevant marriage settlements was Richard Sharpe, a merchant of the Calais staple and one of the leading men of Coventry; the will of Gerard’s bride, made in 1501, identifies her brother as Master Henry Sharpe (d.1489), an important royal servant during the reign of Edward IV. The pedigree of the Sharpe family is unknown, but, on chronological grounds, it is a reasonable assumption that Richard, mayor of Coventry as early as 1433, was the father of Margaret and Henry, and that our MP’s wife was his sister.23 PCC 14 Moone (PROB11/12, ff.108v-109); Recs. Holy Trinity Coventry (Dugdale Soc. xix), 162-3; CPR, 1446-52, p. 315; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, iii. 37-38.

Aside from this series of marriages very little else is known of Sir Edward’s activities in these years. On 9 May 1446 he sued royal letters of exemption from office, a sign that his exclusion from local office was a matter of choice.24 CPR, 1441-6, p. 438. Thereafter he had a brief period of activity. On 8 Apr. 1448 he witnessed an important feoffment made by his neighbour, William Catesby*, and in the early 1450s he sat on two important local juries. On 7 Jan. 1451 he was one of those who convicted a local lawyer for forging documents to land owned by the Archers; and three years later he returned a verdict in favour of Baldwin Mountfort in the dispute over the great inheritance of Sir William Mountfort*. In both instances, and most particularly in the second, the jurors favoured the party supported by the new earl of Warwick, Richard Neville, who had begun to play a central role in the county’s politics.25 CAD, iv. A10387; KB27/753, rot. 39; 774, rot. 78d; 777, rot. 29; Carpenter, 451, 474. This implies that Doddingselles numbered among the earl’s sympathizers, but one could draw the opposite conclusion from his attestation at the parliamentary election held at Warwick on 5 Mar. 1453. This is the only occasion on which he is known to have attended such an election and he was the only one of the leading county gentry among the attestors; one might infer that he was favourable to the return of Thomas Boughton* and Henry Filongley*, representatives of a faction in the county opposed to Neville.26 C219/16/2.

Whatever his sympathies in local politics, Sir Edward was not the type to commit himself to a cause, and there is no evidence he took a part as the political polarization of his native shire was absorbed into a national crisis. One private matter did, however, attract his attention. In 1454 he sued the prior of Maxstoke, claiming extravagant damages of 500 marks on the prior’s failure to allow him to present to the church of Long Itchington. His claim is hard to understand: his family had surrendered the advowson as long before as 1320, and in 1336 it had been appropriated to the priory of Austin canons founded at Maxstoke by their kinsman, William Clinton, earl of Huntington. Sir Edward argued weakly that the advowson appertained to the manor rather than to the four acres of land in Long Itchington with which it had been conveyed to the priory. When this question was put to a jury before the justices of assize on 17 July 1456, Sir Edward troubled to attend in person, but defaulted before the jurors could return their verdict. The priory then pursued its advantage, winning debt and damages against him on an old bond of 1417 when he again failed to appear before the justices in January 1457.27 CP40/773, rot. 328d; 778, rot. 421; 780, rot. 325; 782, rot. 332d; Year Bk. Mich. 33 Hen. VI (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pls. 8-9, pp. 32-34; VCH Warws. ii. 91. This is almost Doddingselles’s last appearance in an active role. He had lapsed into complete obscurity long before his death on 4 Mar. 1466, just short of his 74th birthday. The inquisitions taken after his death are not revealing. Juries in Oxfordshire, Rutland, Hertfordshire and Nottinghamshire returned that he held no lands, and the Warwickshire jury cited only the manor of Bascote which may have come to him as an escheat. His other lands were no doubt in the hands of unrecorded feoffees.28 C140/19/9; VCH Warws. vi. 127. His second wife, who must have been many years his junior, long survived him, and her interest in the family lands does much to explain the obscurity of Sir Edward’s son and heir, Gerard.29 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 815. Thereafter the family survived into the mid sixteenth century when John Doddingselles, ‘betaking himself to extravagent courses put a period to this antient and long flourishing family, and died in miserable condition’.30 Dugdale, i. 344. It was a fitting end to a family that, despite its lengthy survival in the senior male line, succeeded in diminishing in significance as the generations passed.