DANYELL,

Only the surname of this MP is visible on Cricklade’s damaged election indenture for the Parliament of 1455. Some have assumed that he was Thomas Daniell*, the maverick courtier who may have represented another Wiltshire borough, Great Bedwyn, in 1447.1 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 253-5. The assumption that the Cricklade MP was the well-known courtier is repeated in Materials for Hist. Cricklade ed. Thomson, 137, which draws heavily on HP Biogs. Yet there are good grounds for doubting that the courtier sat in a Parliament summoned in the wake of the Yorkist victory at the first battle of St. Albans, not least because Richard, duke of York, was the feudal overlord of Cricklade. In any case, there is no way of knowing whether Thomas was indeed the Christian name of the MP of 1455. Even if it was, it is very likely he was a namesake of the courtier, and it is quite possible that he was from Wiltshire, where there were several fifteenth-century Danyells. For example, Edward Danyel attested the return of the county’s knights of the shire to the Parliament of 1422; in 1456 Nicholas Danyell was associated with (Sir) John Lisle II* in suing a widow in the court of common pleas for trespassing on property at Amesbury; and in 1489 Stephen Danyell of Kingston Deverill (near Warminster) made his will. A brief document, the will shows that Stephen had a wife, three sons and a daughter as well as at least three brothers.2 The Commons 1386-1421, i. 693; C219/13/1; CP40/781, rot. 216d; PCC 11 Milles (PROB11/8, f. 90).