DIGGES, John

The Digges had been resident in east Kent since the thirteenth century and by the beginning of the fifteenth century already had a longstanding involvement in the parliamentary affairs of the county. Roger Digges† (d.1375), our MP’s great-grandfather, had sat as a burgess for Canterbury three times before serving as a knight of the shire in 1366. His grandfather was sheriff of Kent in 1398-9 and 1401-2, and his father attested the parliamentary election for the county, in March 1416. The latter had participated in the Agincourt campaign the previous year, serving as a mounted man-at-arms in Sir William Bowes’s retinue, which took the field with the duke of Clarence.3 E101/45/4. According to his father’s inquisition post mortem, our MP was aged 24 when John senior died on 19 May 1419. The full extent of his inheritance is not known, as the jurors returned that John held no lands in chief.4 CIPM, xxi. 385. Yet the manor of Wychelyng, settled by entail in 1379, was much later said to be held of the dean and chapter of the King’s chapel of St. Stephen in the palace of Westminster, by service of three parts of a knight’s fee and rent to Dover castle. His grandson John held manors and lands in Kent worth over £62 p.a., and it may be that he had held them too.5 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 686.

Shortly after his father’s death, in December 1419, John was one of the 12 men who the commissioners in Kent named as possessing arms and armour for the defence of the county.6 E28/197/15A. There is no evidence, however, that he followed in his father’s footsteps and participated in any military expeditions during his lifetime. In December 1421 he was in Canterbury to attest the parliamentary election, and he performed the same function again in September 1429. His first official appointment came in April 1431 when he was named as one of the commissioners to assess the parliamentary subsidy. In March 1432 Digges was again in Canterbury to attest the election of Geoffrey Lowther* and William Haute* as knights of the shire,7 C219/12/6, 14/1, 3. and two years later he was listed with the other landowners of Kent required to take the oath not to maintain peace-breakers.8 CPR, 1429-36, p. 388. On 17 Dec. 1436 Digges was himself elected as knight of the shire, alongside William Manston*. It is difficult to determine whether his election had any political significance. The 1437 Parliament was dominated by military issues and the Kent elections involved many individuals with connexions with the war effort in France. Manston had served at Agincourt, as had the presiding sheriff, James Fiennes*, while the list of attestors was headed by Sir Thomas Kyriel*, a veteran of the French wars, and William Clifford, a man with close ties to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.9 C219/15/1. Although it appears that Digges had no direct military experience himself, his father’s reputation may have had some bearing on his election (as it probably had done in 1419 when the commissioners named him among the leading military figures in the county).

On his return from Parliament Digges’s involvement in the public affairs of the county appears to have lessened and in the last years of his life it is difficult to separate him with certainty from his own son and heir and another namesake who was son and heir of his younger brother, Aymer Digges (d.1444) of Newington by Hythe.10 C139/116/45; Archaeologia Cantiana, xl. 23; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 65. In 1439 he appeared in person at the Exchequer to make fine after being distrained for knighthood.11 E159/215, recorda Trin. rot. 35. It was probably his son, however, who witnessed the parliamentary elections in 1441 (being then described as ‘John Digges, junior’) and February 1449 (when his name appears towards the end of the long list of attestors). Nevertheless, it seems likely that it was our MP who was appointed to the powerful commission of August 1450 to assess the parliamentary subsidy in Kent. This commission included such prominent figures as Kyriel, Manston and Haute and, given that much of the county had only recently been involved in Cade’s rebellion, would have required a great deal of tact in its execution.12 E179/124/218. If this individual was our MP it was one of the last acts of his career. He was dead by Hilary term 1453 when his executors, his son and Thomas St. Nicholas, were pursuing one of his debtors in the court of common pleas.13 CP40/768, rot. 288. In 1450 he had sued the same debtor, John Bulbroke of Cotmanton, for breaking his closes at Cotmanton: CP40/758, rot. 77.

Little more evidence survives of Digges’s private concerns than his public career. The date of his marriage to a daughter of Sir Maurice Bruyn is unknown. Bruyn was an Essex landowner, with interests in Kent near Beckenham, but was also a soldier with connexions with the dukes of Gloucester and York. Like Digges’s father, Sir Maurice had served in Normandy with the duke of Clarence and it is tempting to suggest that this was the union of two families with a common military and political outlook.14 DKR, xliv. 565, 600. It is clear that Digges’s interests were concentrated in and around Canterbury. In 1426 he witnessed a deed by William Benet* and other feoffees of property in the city,15 Canterbury Cath. Archs., Canterbury city recs., burghmote reg. 1298-1503, CCA-CC-O/A/1, ff. 42-43v. while he himself held land nearby at Lower Hardes and Nackington worth some £4 13s. 4d. p.a. according to the assessments made in 1431.16 Feudal Aids, iii. 57, 70, 71. In the early sixteenth century his family’s memory in Canterbury was perpetuated by ‘Dygges meadow’, a piece of land on the banks of the river Stour just outside the city walls.17 Canterbury city recs., chamberlains’ accts. 1502-1515, CCA-CC-F/A/10, f. 377. Little evidence survives of Digges’s connexions with his neighbours. In November 1436, along with Sir Thomas Kyriel and the lawyers Henry Hickes* and John Greenford*, he was appointed as a trustee of the goods of Stephen de Cosyngton.18 CCR, 1435-41, p. 113. It was almost certainly our MP (described as ‘of Barham, esquire’) who, in Easter term 1449, was accused of close-breaking at Lyminge the previous year. The property was then in the hands of a powerful group of feoffees led by Gervase Clifton*. It was claimed that Digges, along with the Canterbury alderman, John Mulling*, and several others, had been enfeoffed by the manor’s previous owners and their interest in the property had ceased on its more recent transfer to Clifton and the rest.19 CP40/753, rot. 321.

Digges was buried alongside his ancestors in his parish church of Barham. A brass, showing a man in full armour still exists there and is commonly supposed to represent our MP.20 Archaeologia Cantiana, xl. 4-5; Mon. Brasses ed. Mill Stephenson, 207. His son played a far fuller role in the public affairs of Kent than he had done: John was named on numerous commissions from 1460, and pricked sheriff in 1463. Having been rewarded with a royal annuity in 1462 for his support of Edward IV, he emerged as one of the leading supporters of the Yorkist regime in the county, and despite serving on the Readeption bench in Kent and possibly marrying one of the daughters of the Lancastrian Gervase Clifton, he quickly re-established himself in the King’s service after the events of 1470-1.21 M. Mercer, ‘Kent and National Politics’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1995), ch. 3. The date of his death is not known. The Digges family continued to be prominent in Kent and in Parliament into the seventeenth century, most famously in the person of that celebrated Jacobean parliamentarian, Sir Dudley Digges†.