DANBY, Thomas

By the beginning of the fifteenth century the Danbys were an established merchant family in York. A John Danby (d.1400) had been made free in 1375 and Alan Danby, possibly his brother, was admitted two years later, while in 1393 a William Danby (d.1427) was also admitted. The MP’s relationship to these men is unknown, although some form of kinship seems probable.4 J. Kermode, ‘Merchants of York, Hull and Beverley’ (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1990), app. 4. Kermode, Med. Merchants, 74 errs in stating that the MP was son of Robert Danby, esq., of Farneley, Yorks. The Thomas Danby appointed executor of the will of his brother, Robert, in 1480 can hardly have been the MP who had died some 22 years earlier: Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 215; New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxi. 264. All the Danbys traded in cloth and were active in the Hanseatic trade. Thomas, described as a mercer, was made a freeman of the city in 1424.5 Freemen of York (Surtees Soc. xcvi), 134. In 1430-1 he was importing various goods, including cloth from Brabant, into Kingston-upon-Hull. Five years later he found himself accused of attempting to smuggle goods, including 40 barrels of beer and 12 woollen cloths, to Iceland. The goods, freighted in a ship called Le Katerine of Hull, owned by Sir Henry Brounflete, were seized by the authorities, and in Easter term 1438 Brounflete sought to recover £20 from Danby for the freight of the merchandise in the court of common pleas. Danby was probably no stranger to mercantile disputes, and successfully waged his law. The matter was eventually settled for good in July 1439 by the issue of a royal pardon to Danby and his fellow merchants, as well as to Brounflete.6 E122/61/32; CP40/709, rot. 123; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 294-5.

By this date Danby had begun to take an active role in the government of York and his personal involvement in overseas trade may have declined as a consequence. In February 1438 he had been elected one of the city chamberlains, and in September the following year he was chosen one of the sheriffs. Probably at the end of his shrieval year he was admitted to the council of 24, and it was almost certainly in this capacity that he witnessed the parliamentary election indenture on 15 Jan. 1442. In the following December he was present in the city council chamber when it was decided to review the city’s boundaries. Little other evidence survives of his involvement in civic affairs during the 1440s, but he was present once more to attest the parliamentary election in January 1449 (by which time he had almost certainly joined the ranks of the aldermen) and again that October.7 York Memoranda Bk. iii (Surtees Soc. clxxxvi), 133; C219/15/7.

In February 1452 Danby was elected mayor of York. His mayoral year apparently passed without incident and soon after taking office (and also in the following May) he was named on commissions to deliver York’s gaol. Barely three weeks after the end of his mayoralty Danby was chosen, alongside another alderman, Thomas Nelson*, as one of the burgesses to the Parliament summoned to meet at Reading on 6 Mar. 1453. Danby’s wealth and status (and the fact that he had not previously sat in the Commons) may have made him a natural choice for what promised to be a long and potentially contentious meeting. Both men left York before the end of February and received wages for 35 days at the first session. On 25 Apr. Parliament met for its second session at Westminster and Danby was paid for 75 days’ service between April and the end of June. On 12 Nov. the Parliament assembled again at Reading, but was prorogued immediately because of the King’s illness and on this occasion Danby was only away from home for eight days (a day longer than his colleague). In the financial year ending in February 1454 Danby claimed parliamentary wages of £34 2s., at the customary rate of 4s. a day, but received only £15 from the chamberlains. The following year, a further £8 12s. of this sum was paid, as well as another £14 for 70 days’ service beginning on 8 Feb., suggesting that the York MPs arrived at Reading only to find that the session, which began on 11 Feb., had been moved to Westminster. Parliament reassembled there on 14 Feb. and, because of Nelson’s election as mayor 11 days before, Danby had to assume the representative responsibilities alone. None the less, over the assembly as a whole, both MPs were busy about the city’s affairs. Gifts were given to lawyers, including Thomas Urswyk II*, while evidence was collected from the chancellor, Archbishop Kemp of York, and the London wardmoot court concerning the city’s jurisdiction over the neighbouring wapentake of Ainsty.8 York City Chamberlains’ Acct. Rolls, 84, 96. Little evidence survives of Danby’s subsequent role in civic affairs. He continued, however, to be involved in the daily administration of the city as an alderman until his death, regularly attending council meetings and witnessing deeds.9 York Memoranda Bk. ii (Surtees Soc. cxxv), 198, 200.

Few details of Danby’s private interests survive from the period after he had become established among the city elite. His membership of the Mercer’s Company can only be inferred, but in 1451 he was renting one of the company’s tenements in Petergate for an annual rent of 20s.10 York Mercers (Surtees Soc. cxxix), 57. In November 1429 he had taken out a lease for 60 years of a tenement in Goodramgate from the master of the hospital of Jesus and the Blessed Virgin, Fossgate.11 Archs. Co. Merchant Adventurers, York (Borthwick Texts and Cals. xvi), 152. He remained active in trade, and although the details of this are obscure it may have increasingly concentrated on inland traffic. In May 1455 Thomas Briscowe of Coventry was pardoned for failing to answer a plea for a debt of £24 entered by Danby before the justices of the common pleas.12 CPR, 1452-61, p. 241. On 10 Sept. that year Danby availed himself of the general pardon (in which he was described as ‘citizen and merchant of York’), as he had done in June 1446, perhaps as a precaution against actions taken by his business creditors.13 C67/39, m. 42; 41, m. 26. An alternative explanation is that Danby had become embroiled in the dispute between Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and the Percy family. In August 1453 the two sides had clashed at Heworth Moor, just outside the city; and in the following May Thomas Percy, Lord Egremont, and Henry Holand, duke of Exeter, entered York, assaulted the mayor and Danby’s former parliamentary colleague, Thomas Nelson, and left the city in uproar. Indictments relating to this incident, which involved some of the city’s leading citizens (although not Danby himself), were heard in York in the summer of 1454 and spring of 1455 and, whatever, his involvement in the affair, Danby may have thought it prudent to purchase the general pardon in its aftermath.14 R.A. Griffiths, King and Country, 334, 343-52; R.L. Storey, End of House of Lancaster, 131-2.

Danby made his will on 29 Apr. 1458. He asked to be buried in his parish church of Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, and he made bequests for the church fabric there and for the rector to sing ten obits for his soul. A chaplain was also to be provided with £20 to sing placebo et dirige for his soul and those of his friends for four years. Danby left bequests to a number of religious houses and guilds, both in York and elsewhere in Yorkshire. These included the various houses of mendicant friars in York, the convent at Mountgrace and Knaresborough priory. He settled his property in the city and in Newton near York on his widow for her lifetime, with remainder to his daughter, Margaret Salvayn. Margaret was also to receive an annuity of 100s. for the next four years. A number of named individuals, possibly servants, received small cash bequests, while his fellow mercer, William Holbeck*, received a silver spoon ‘de Yselond’ (perhaps recalling an earlier joint trading venture). After his debts, funeral and other expenses had been paid, the residue of his estate was to be divided equally between his widow and further provisions for his soul. He appointed his widow and Robert Ecopp as his executors and probate was granted on the following 20 May.15 York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 364. Matilda did not long outlive her husband, making her will in the following year and naming her daughter Margaret and William Holbeck as her executors. Margaret, who had made a good marriage to Henry Salvayn, went on after her first husband’s death to marry, at an uncertain date between 1464 and 1474, Thomas Euer, a younger son of the prominent Yorkshire landowner, Sir William Euer*.16 Ibid. ff. 595-6; New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. cxi. 264; C1/28/390.