DOWN, John

At the close of this Parliament of 1449-50, an esquire of the King’s household named John Doun was granted exemption from the Act of Resumption in respect of the grant made to him for life of £10 p.a. from the issues of the forests of Delamare and Mondrem in Cheshire. Doun, who came from Utkinton, held the keepership of the forests by hereditary right, and the grant had been made to him in July 1443.1 CPR, 1441-6, p. 189; PROME, xii. 126. A descendant of his, Sir John Done† (d.1561) sat in Parliament for Cheshire in the 16th cent.: The Commons 1509-58, ii. 51-52. The Cheshire man had followed others from the north-west, most notably Ralph Legh* and Thomas Daniell* (with whom he had dealings) into royal service, and it is not unfeasible that like them he had also sought election to Parliament for a southern constituency.2 E40/5626. Yet there is nothing to connect him with Guildford or anywhere else in Surrey to confirm a supposition that he was the man then sitting in the Commons.

The MP may well have been a member of one of two families of this name which were settled in Surrey in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but there is no direct evidence to connect him with either Thomas Down of Cobham or Laurence Down (d.1478) of Effingham, both of whom attested the shire elections to this same Parliament of November 1449, held in the county court at Guildford.3 VCH Surr. iii. 303-4, 323, 444; C140/65/14. There is, however, a possibility that he was the John Down who lived at Kingston-upon-Thames, and who before June 1428, together with his wife Margery, conveyed lands at nearby Tolworth to Thomas and Joan Polthorne. As one of the leading townsmen in July 1439 he joined the local bailiffs of Kingston in granting a licence to enclose lands in Surbiton.4 CPR, 1436-41, p.291; CAD, iii. D1241. Although Down may not have been the only Guildford MP to reside elsewhere in Surrey, he is unusual in that no other record survives of his connexion with the borough, either before or after his election to Parliament.