DOREWARD, John

The Dorewards, who rose to prominence in the late fourteenth century, owned considerable estates in Essex and East Anglia that were worth at least £255 p.a. By the mid 1430s, the MP’s father was the fifth richest landowner below baronial rank in Essex and wealthy enough to make substantial loans to the Crown.9 J.S. Roskell, ‘John Doreward’, Trans. Essex Arch. Soc. ser. 3, viii. 210; PPC, iv. 303, 323, 326; CPR, 1429-36, p. 467. Doreward’s grandfather, another John Doreward, was twice Speaker of the Commons and served on Henry IV’s council, but neither the MP nor his father and namesake had as significant a public career. In Doreward’s case, this probably owed much to the latter’s longevity. During his father’s lifetime, he gained a place on the Essex bench and served on the occasional commission but the elder man tended generally to represent the family in local administration. A j.p. in Essex for some 25 years, Doreward’s father was twice sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire and served on numerous ad hoc commissions. The elder John never sat in Parliament but he attended great councils in 1434 and 1455.10 PPC, iv. 213; vi. 341. Probably a lawyer like his own father the Speaker, he was a servant of Richard, duke of York,11 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 16, 64, 231, 235. and a feoffee for other prominent figures, including John de Vere, 12th earl of Oxford,12 CPR, 1429-36, p. 602. Henry, Lord Bourgchier,13 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 532-3. and William, Lord Ferrers of Groby.14 CCR, 1441-7, p. 261; 1454-61, p. 324. He also had dealings with the prominent East Anglian knight, Sir John Fastolf.15 A.R. Smith, ‘Acquisition of Sir John Fastolf’s Estates’, in Rulers and Ruled ed. Archer and Walker, 140; CCR, 1429-35, p. 253; 1441-7, p. 140.

Doreward himself may have received a legal training. According to one authority, he attended Lincoln’s Inn, and the records of that establishment show that ‘Dorward junior’ was one of its members in 1437.16 Roskell, 222; Lincoln’s Inn, London, Black Bk. 1, f. 165. A Colchester court roll provides the earliest known reference to the MP, showing that he stood surety for his father in the borough court there in May 1426.17 Essex RO, Colchester bor. recs., ct. roll 1425-6, D/B 5 Cr46, m. 23d. The Dorewards had close links with the town, which lay near several of their manors. The MP’s father owned property at Colchester and was a member of its guild of St. Helen.18 Ibid. ct. rolls 1426-7, 1432-3, 1447-8, 1451-2, 1459-60, D/B 5 Cr47, mm. 10d, 18; 51, m. 19d; 62, m. 14d; 64, m. 18d; 70, m. 16; acct. roll masters of St. Helen’s guild, 1441-2, D/B 5 Z2; C1/1489/56. In spite of having reached his majority by the early years of Henry VI’s reign, Doreward was not appointed to any office of significance until he was made a j.p. in 1448. Five years later, at a county court attended by his father, he gained election to his only Parliament.

The Parliament of 1453 contained a significant courtier element but Doreward is not known to have had any connexion with the royal Household. Even though the elder John had links with the duke of York, the Dorewards (York’s feudal tenants at Topsfield and Gosfield),19 C140/57/9. managed to retain the trust of the Lancastrian regime in the final years of Henry VI. In December 1459 the elder John and one of his younger sons, William, were appointed to an anti-Yorkist commission of array in Essex, and in the following February William and Richard, another of the MP’s brothers, were commissioned to rally men from the county for service against the Yorkist rebels. A few months later, however, the new King, Edward IV, appointed their father to another commission to raise a fleet for the Yorkist Crown.20 CPR, 1452-61, pp. 558, 658; 1461-7, p. 33. At the end of 1461, Edward granted him and his eldest son the offices of steward of the honour of Rayleigh and bailiff of Rochford hundred in survivorship. The grant cited their previous good service to the King and the late duke of York, under whom the elder John and Sir Edmund Mulsho* had held the stewardship of Rayleigh in the past,21 Johnson, 64, 231, 235. but the MP is not known to have served the duke in any official capacity.

Doreward’s father died on 30 Jan. 1466 and was buried with his already dead wife and his own father, the Speaker, in Bocking parish church.22 Weever, 377. He is therefore to be distinguished from the frustratingly unidentifiable John Doreward ‘of London, esq.’ who died violently in the city on the previous 17 Sept. John’s widow, Joan, subsequently brought appeals for murder against Agnes Hakbych and Richard Sadeler for his death: KB27/818, rots. 111d, 141d; 819, rot. 22; 820, rot. 30; 821, fines rot. 2d. The MP inherited his armour and harness, all his livestock at Bocking and a valuable estate, consisting of Bocking and a dozen or more other manors, situated mainly in the north and north-east of Essex. At least five of these manors, including one at Coggeshall, were properties his mother, the first of his parents to die, had brought to the Doreward family.23 PCC 2 Godyn (PROB11/5, ff. 13-15); The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 790; C140/57/59; 77/179; P. Morant, Essex, i. 289, 312, 452; ii. 162, 346. Doreward’s brothers, William and Richard, were also provided for with lands, but not out of the family patrimony. Their father had negotiated marriages for them (probably in the early 1440s) with the two daughters and heirs of Sir Roger Harsyk of Norfolk, and each became a landowner in that county in the right of his wife.24 CCR, 1441-7, p. 44; F. Blomefield, Norf. vi. 78-79, 519; ix. 392-3, 398, 482; x. 383. In March 1468 the Crown awarded Doreward and others the keeping of a plot of land in the London parishes of St. Mary’s, Staining Lane, and St. Olaves, so confirming a previous grant (already several times renewed) to his father. The purpose of the original grant, made nearly 30 years earlier, was to support an almshouse founded by the elder John Doreward at Bocking for the relief of the poor as well as the spiritual welfare of himself and the then King, Henry VI.25 CFR, xviii. 209, 236; xx. 114, 240; VCH Essex, ii. 183; CPR, 1436-41, p. 446; 1452-61, p. 34; PROME, xii415.

Shortly before coming into his own, Doreward had received the honour of knighthood at the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville but he had no trouble adapting to the Readeption, during which he secured a confirmation of the grant of March 1468.26 CFR, xx. 288-9. After Edward IV had recovered the throne, he obtained a royal pardon (dated 4 July 1472) but it is impossible to tell whether this had any connexion with his activities in the Readeption period.27 C67/49, m. 21. The circumstances of a previous pardon dated 5 Nov. 1468 (C67/46, m. 15) are likewise unknown. His final ad hoc commission came in January 1475, shortly before he married for the last time. (The identity of his previous wife is a mystery.) During the negotiations for his match with Clemence, the widow of a wealthy London draper, he agreed to grant her an estate for life in his manor of Rawreth in Essex and, in March 1475, the King licensed him to convey the property to feoffees acting on her behalf. For her part, Clemence promised to provide her new husband with 1,000 marks’ worth of plate and jewels, but she had yet to honour this undertaking when Doreward died on 12 Sept. 1476. His successor was his son and namesake, who had recently attained his majority. Young John did not long survive his father, for he died in November 1480. Although married (to Anne, a daughter and coheir of (Sir) Thomas Urswyk II*), he left no children and his heir was his uncle, William Doreward. William died in the following year, leaving a son, another John Doreward. This John died childless in 1495, meaning that the manors and other lands once held by the MP passed out of the Doreward family.28 CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1144; PCC 12 Wattys; CPR, 1467-77, p. 509; C140/57/59.