John Danvers

John Danvers, who succeeded his father at Ipswell and Colthorpe, married first Alice Verney, and secondly Joan Bruley. Of their ancestry we shall give an account in another chapter. In the 'Heralds' Visitations,' in which these marriages are recorded, John Danvers is called of Ipswell and Banbury. By his first wife he had three sons, Robert, Richard and John, and one daughter, Agnes or Annys. John Danvers cannot have been born later than the year 1382, as in the year 1403 he is of age to join his father in giving a charter. In the year 1413, the first year of the reign of Henry V, we find him, with others, engaged in founding the chantry of the Blessed Mary in Banbury Church, where for ever two priests were daily to say Masses for the souls of the King, and of Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, of Philip de Repingdon, Bishop of Lincoln, and of John Danvers, and others who are named. Then, thirty-five years after, we find John Danvers and others founding a fraternity or guild of Saint Mary of Banbury to support certain religious services and chaplains, and eight poor persons dwelling in the almshouse, and their successors in the same place for ever. The old almshouse was pulled down in 1711, when the present house was built by Francis, Lord North and Guildford, and the inmates still receive in the form of an endowment, formerly called the ' weekly,' and now the ' widows',' groats, the benefits of the guild founded by John Danvers and his fellow townsmen in 1448. In the year 1431 the Bishop of Lincoln sold to John Danvers his manor of Esendon (Easington), by Banbury, with houses and lands, etc., belonging thereto, together with the warren of Warden, and the work due from tenants of Nethrop and Colthorp, with amercements, etc., in the court of the Bishop and his successors, and also his fishery in the Cherwell. In the Close Rolls and Oxfordshire fines of this period, we find the record of many purchases of houses and lands by John Danvers: in 1417, in Bourton Magna and Parva, and the same year in Wardington Bourton, Banbury, and Tusmere, and again, in 1420, property in Wardington, and Bourton (Oxon fines, 15 of 4 Henry V, and 38 of 7 Henry V; Close Rolls, 4 and 6 Henry V). In 1439, in conjunction with his eldest son Robert Danvers, John Danvers bought from John Vernon land and houses in Wycombe, Taplow, Hutcham and Hedsore (Close Roll 18 Henry VI), and at the same time he, with his second son, Richard, bought an angular tenement in a new street in Deddington. Then we find him in 1419 making one of the most notable of his purchases, that of Prestcote Manor and its appurtenances, with lands in Prestcote, Cropredy, Wardington, Williamscote, Mollington, Bourton Magna and Parva, Banbury and Shottswell, all of which he bought of Sir Thomas Cottesford and his wife Alice (Oxon fines, 17, 6 Henry V, No. 22 of 5 Henry V; Close Roll 7 Henry V, M. 19). Of Prestcote Manor more will be said hereafter; at present let it suffice to note that John Danvers was buying back the lands in Bourton and the neighbourhood which belonged to his ancestors, whom we have frequently found associated with the lords of Prestcote, Cropredy, Williamscote and Wardington, in charters to the Priory of Chaucumbe and other neighbouring religious foundations. Prestcote remained with John's descendants till the year 1721. In Oxon fine, 85 of 18 Henry VI (1439), we find John Danvers and others buying from Sir Thomas Wykeham the manor of Saint Amand, in Adderbury, with its appurtenances in that parish, and in the hamlet of Milton. Other names are mentioned in the fine, but Sir Thomas Wykeham was the seller, and John Danvers was the purchaser of the manor, and to his son. Sir Thomas Danvers, the manor passed at his death. At Adderbury a branch of the Danvers family remained till the reign of Charles II. In addition to the above and other lands which John Danvers bought, he received as dowry with his first wife, Alice Verney, land in Byfield, and with his second wife, Joan Bruley, who was a considerable heiress, the manor of Waterstock, and the advowson of the church, the manor of Henton, in Oxfordshire, the manor of Corston, in Wilts, and the advowson of the chapel there. John Danvers was evidently a wealthy man, and it seems very probable that he gained a portion of his wealth by trading. He was Knight of the Shire of Oxford in three Parliaments, those of November, 1420, November, 1421, and September, 1423. In the first two of these he had as one of his colleagues his distant cousin, Sir William Danvers, who at the time represented the county of Berkshire, and was then, or shortly after, knighted. John Danvers does not appear to have been a knight, and, indeed, if we look through the rolls of the members of the period, we find that a large proportion of the knights of the shires were simple esquires, but it was ordered that the persons chosen should be notable knights of the shire which elected them, or else notable squires, gentlemen of birth, capable of becoming knights, and no man of the degree of yeoman or below it was eligible. The last record of John Danvers which we have discovered is dated in 1448, and he must have died shortly after, and was probably buried in the chantry which he had helped to found in Banbury Church. His shield, Brancestre impaling Bruley, was amongst those which Antony Wood mentions as in his time in the church. At Ipswell, at Prestcote and in Bourton, John Danvers was succeeded by his sons by his first wife, Robert and Richard; his third son, John, was a clerk in holy orders. The property which he obtained as dowry with his second wife, together with Colthorpe and the Adderbury manor, went to Thomas Danvers, his eldest son by his second wife, with remainder to William, the second son. Joan, widow of John Danvers, married Sir Walter Mauntell, of Nether Heyford, Northampton, and a stone formerly marked her resting-place in the village church. But this, like all the monuments of her own family, is lost or destroyed. The Latin inscription cut on the stone mentioned her former husbands, Walter Mauntell and John Danvers. In the year 1490 (Dodsworth MS. No. 22, folio 52) was proved the will of a Sir Walter Mauntell, in which he desires that he may be buried in the church of Lower Heyford, and he makes Amys, his wife, and William Danvers, Serjeant-at-law, his executors, but we have not been able to determine whether it was this Sir Walter who was the husband of Joan Bruley.