DARCY, Robert I

More can be added to the earlier biography.2 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 749-52.

The Tudor antiquary John Leland’s assertion that Darcy married the widow of a wealthy merchant and shipowner from Maldon supports the suggestion that his first wife, Margaret, was local to the borough.3 J. Leland, Itin. ed. Toulmin Smith, iv. 87.

While citing a fine of 1407 by which the couple acquired extensive holdings in Maldon, the previous biography failed to mention that this transaction also included a messuage at Cambridge.4 Essex Feet of Fines, iii. 248. Whether or not Darcy retained this particular property, it is unlikely that his link with Cambridge was of any great importance, given the lack of other evidence showing a connexion between him and that town.

On one occasion, probably during Henry V’s reign, Darcy entertained John Kirkby (‘student at law’) at his house in Maldon. Perhaps to be identified with John Kirkby I*, Kirkby was a steward of John Stone, King’s secretary and dean of the collegiate church of St. Martin le Grand, London, when the second Lancastrian monarch was on the throne. Decades later, in September 1443, he made a formal statement before a group of lawyers and gentry acting on behalf of Richard Caudray, one of Stone’s successors as dean. He informed them that he had once held a view of frankpledge at Maldon, Essex, where the dean possessed jurisdictional rights, on behalf of Stone. He added that Darcy had invited him to both dinner and supper after he had completed his duties, and had given him a ‘chaplet of thrummes’,5 Some kind of wreath or necklace made up of unwoven threads. a thing of novelty (‘de noua coniectura’) at that time.6 Westminster Abbey muns. 8121. Presumably, Caudray had called upon the former steward to make his statement after encountering a challenge to his church’s rights at Maldon.

In late 1423, Darcy joined his friend Sir Gerard Braybrooke†, Reynold Kentwood, dean of St. Paul’s, and Richard Baynard* in taking five bonds in statute staple, each for £50, from Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, and others, perhaps in connexion with debts that the peer had contracted with Braybrooke. Shortly afterwards, Braybrooke conveyed his manor and advowson of Danbury to Darcy in trust.

By the later 1420s, Darcy had acquired important seigneurial rights at Maldon, the lordship of which comprised two manorial moieties. He was in possession of ‘Patrick’s Moiety’, which subsequently passed to his son and heir, by 1428.7 Essex Archaeology and Hist. xxxi. 148-9.

During the 1420s and 1430s, Darcy participated in a drawn out property dispute over the Brokholes inheritance. Like other Essex gentry associates of Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenney, he took the side of John Sumpter* of Colchester, the widower of one of the coheirs to the inheritance, against the other coheir, Sumpter’s sister-in-law Joan and her husband Robert Arneburgh (uncle of Reynold*), and in doing so he earned the Arneburghs’ bitter enmity. A document drawn up between 1437 and Darcy’s death records their version of events. With vituperative satisfaction this observed that he was the only member of the group then still alive (‘ther is non left a lyve saf Darcy’) and predicted that God would soon take his life away as well.8 C. Carpenter, Armburgh Pprs. 16, 63.

By the mid 1440s, Darcy was a councillor for Richard duke of York, receiving an annual retainer of £20 in return, and he was farming York’s Essex honour of Rayleigh for 100 marks p.a. in 1447-8.9 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 230.

In the same period, Darcy and his brother-in-law, Henry Filongley, were obliged to defend their valuable office of keeper of the writs in the court of common pleas, a position in which Darcy’s interest dated back to 1410, and which they had held jointly since October 1440. Appointed by letters patent, the keepers were servants of the King, and it was as keeper that Darcy featured in household accounts of the mid 1420s, the 1430s and the early 1440s. Unfortunately for him and Filongley, the King, whether through carelessness or blithe disregard of their patent, made a fresh grant of keepership to John Ulveston*, receiver of Eton College, and Thomas del Rowe* on 17 Oct. 1444, thereby provoking litigation in the common pleas between the rival pairs of appointees. In a suit of Hilary term 1445, Ulveston and del Rowe asserted that the grant of October 1440 to Darcy and Filongley was void, since it had not referred to the annuity of £60 that Darcy had received in compensation after previously losing the office to John Hotoft* in 1415. In response, Darcy and Filongley pointed out that the MP had surrendered the annuity upon recovering the keepership in 1423. They also successfully petitioned the Parliament of 1445 (of which Darcy was a Member) for the confirmation of their letters patent. Furthermore, in a lawsuit of their own they demanded £600 damages against del Rowe for impeding them in the implementation of the office between 30 Oct. 1444 and 9 June 1445. As later records of the common pleas bear out, Darcy and Filongley won the dispute, which formally ended on 1 Dec. 1445 when they and their rivals released all actions one to the other.10 M. Hastings, Ct. Common Pleas, 131-2, 132n, 133, 277; E361/6, rot. 17; E101/408/14, 19, 21; 409/4, 6; CP40/736, rot. 450; 738, rot. 528d; 739, rots. 337-9d; 740, cart. rot. 1.

A copy of Darcy’s will, dated 15 Apr. 1448 and proved on the following 20 Oct., survives in a ‘Regelter Boke’ kept by his descendant, John, Lord Darcy of Chithe, in Elizabeth I’s reign.11 Egerton 3401. It shows that he outlived his second wife, Alice, who already lay in the church of All Saints, Maldon, and beside whom he sought burial. He also sought 2,000 masses, or as near to that number as possible (‘as nighe as it maybe’), for himself and his wives on the day of his burial and issued instructions for the chantry which his executors subsequently founded in All Saints’. He made special mention of two patrons who had predeceased him, Joan de Bohun, countess of Hereford, and Joan Beauchamp, Lady Abergavenny, requesting prayers for them both. He also ordered that two priests should sing for the soul of Lady Abergavenny in Rochford parish church, to fulfil his remaining obligations as one of her executors. The will confirms that Darcy had six daughters who survived him. Two of them, Anne and Isabel, were still single when he died and he assigned each of them a marriage portion of 300 marks. He left the bulk of his estate to his elder son Robert, who succeeded to a dozen or more manors in Essex, although he provided for John, Robert’s younger brother, with two manors at Tolleshunt and gave away certain properties to St. John’s abbey in Colchester. He appointed four executors, William Ardeley, abbot of St. John’s, his son Robert, his brother-in-law Henry Filongley and Robert Roo, clerk. To monitor their duties, he named an impressive group of overseers, comprising two peers, Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, and Henry, Viscount Bourgchier, and their respective wives, and two important Essex gentry, (Sir) Thomas Tyrell* and John Doreward (father of John Doreward*). He left £10 to Buckingham, £20 to his duchess and £10 each to Bourgchier and his wife (the duke of York’s sister), beseeching them to protect the interests of his children and will. Darcy had formed a particularly close connexion with Tyrell in his later years, for by the time he made the will his daughter Eleanor was the wife of Sir Thomas’s eldest son William and his own sons, Robert and John, had married two of the knight’s daughters. A postscript to the will directed the executors to forgive Tyrell £20 of the 100 marks in which he was bound to Darcy, by means of three obligations connected with one or more of these marriages.12 Ibid. ff. 5v-9v.