Geoffrey Mann and Doreen Williams
In Part 1 of this paper, the pedigree and life of Sir John
Dackombe, son of Richard Dackombe of Motcombe, Dorset, was described up to his
marriage. Part 2 deals with Sir John's
subsequent career and the misfortunes which befell his family after his early
death in 1618.
John Dackombe was married c1592 at about 22
years of age. His bride was a young widow with three children, Melior
Mohun[1]. According to the Mohun
pedigree in the Visitation of Dorset 1623, she was from the Pitt family of
Blandford[2]. As shown in the following paragraphs, there were connections
between the Pitt, Mohun and Dackombe families, so there is no reason to doubt
this origin of Sir John's wife, though at present it has not been possible to
place her on the Pitt family tree.
Melior Pitt married her first husband, Robert
Mohun, about 1588. He was the eldest
son of Robert Mohun of Melcombe Regis, Weymouth, a wealthy merchant. The will of Robert Mohun senior[3], dated
1578 and proved in 1581, was witnessed by William Pytt and Henry Pitt, and also
mentions a house in Bridport "where John Pitt dwelleth". Thus there was a close connection between the
Mohun and the Pitt family. A branch of
the Mohun family was at Boconnoc, Cornwall, which provides another link with
the Pitt family since the grandson of Thomas Pitt of Blandford was Thomas Pitt
of Boconnoc (1653-1726)[4].
In Part 1 of this paper, it was shown that
the manor of Iwerne Steepleton, Dorset, remained in the possession of the
Dackombe family for over 230 years and was bequeathed to Sir John Dackombe in
1607 by his uncle Robert Dackombe.
Hutchins notes that after the Dackombes, Steepleton came into the
possession of Sir William Pitt early in the 17C, and in the 1677 Visitation of
Dorset, it is stated that the Pitt family of Blandford was descended from a
brother of William Pitt of Steepleton.
It is clear therefore that Sir John sold Steepleton after he inherited
it in 1607 to his wife's kinsman Sir William Pitt. Sir William (later of Stratfieldsaye) lived 1559-1636 and was the
brother of Thomas Pitt, physician of Blandford, from whom the Pitts of Blandford
descended[4]. Sir William Pitt was
about 11 years older than Melior Pitt, and very probably either her brother or
cousin.
Melior bore three daughters, Melior, Margaret
and Amy, to Robert Mohun junior before he died about 1592. His widow married John Dackombe shortly
after. Her daughter by her first
husband, Melior Moone, married John Dackombe's younger brother, Nicholas, about
1610, thus creating a complicated family relationship [1]. After marrying John Dackombe, Melior bore
three more known children, Alice, Dorothy, and John. A family tree is shown in Fig.3 [1-11].
In 1596, four years after his marriage, John
Dackombe was admitted to the Middle Temple in London[12]. This was a popular move for young Dorset
gentleman of the time. James Dackombe
of Steepleton for example had been admitted in 1572, and James' son William in
1594. Numerous other Dorset names
appear in the admission registers. By
1597 John Dackombe was an inner barrister and being fined regularly for absence
from the formal Temple dinners at Lent and Christmas.
In 1597, after long endeavour, he persuaded
one Arthur Gorges to write to Robert Cecil, asking Cecil if he would retain
John Dackombe whom he knew to be "honest and discrete in the use of his
pen". The letter mentioned that
this was also the wish of his uncle John Budden by whom he had been brought
up[13].
The letter clearly had the desired
effect. By 1602 and probably earlier,
Sir John was in Cecil's service. By
1609 he was Cecil's steward[14]. His
particular skills lay in land deals.
These were the investments of the age, land being purchased both for
income and capital appreciation. And Cecil had need of money. In 1602, he had moved into his expensive
Salisbury House on the Strand having sold Beaumont House in Chelsea to the
above mentioned Arthur Gorges for £6000 - though payment dragged on for
years. By 1603 Cecil had spent over
£35,000 on land. According to one
biographer of Cecil, his associates Roger Houghton and John Dackombe assisted in
raising this sum in part by the "financial dismemberment" of Cecil's
brother-in-law Lord Cobham[15].
Cecil's need for money continued with his
building of Hatfield House. In 1611,
Dackombe put Cecil's debts at £24,000 and listed his endeavours to free his
estate[14]. Cecil died the following year, and Dackombe penned his will and was
appointed an executor[16].
Dackombe was not without enemies, and just
two days after Cecil's death, Dackombe wrote to Cecil's son the second Earl of
Salisbury protesting at the slanderous statements made about him by Roger
Houghton, his co-steward. In this
letter, Dackombe claimed to have gained Cecil's estate over £35,000 and £1000
pa in land, and adds "I was not ignorant how to augment myne owne estate
that knew how to advantage their Lordships so much"[17].
The 2nd Earl retained Dackombe as his
solicitor and auditor, and he was a guest at Hatfield later in 1612 [18]. Dackombe however was already allying himself
with the rising star of George Villiers, later Lord Buckingham. Bacon called him Buckingham's agent[19] and
in 1614 Dackombe was made Master of the Court of Requests and Commissioner in
the sale of the King's lands[20]. He
was also elected member of Parliament for Corfe Castle in the Addled Parliament
which sat for less than two months [21].
In the same year he matched his daughter Alice with Henry Smith alias
Neville of Cressing Temple, a son of the influential Neville family[22].
Chamberlain noted that in May 1615, Dackombe
accompanied the two new Knights of the Garter in their procession from London
to Windsor wearing the feathers of Lord Knollis. Two months later, he wrote that Dackombe has the reversion of the
Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster "which is a great step from that
he was few years agon"[23].
Dackombe was knighted and succeeded to the
Duchy Chancellorship in June 1616, despite opposition from the Council. Chamberlain writes that this was because of
the "meanness of the man and that he had been detected in divers frauds
and fowle dealings specially in the pardon propounded the last year for the
earl of Somerset". He adds that
Dackombes sure cards were that Sir George Villiers and the Prince betted on his
side[24].
The Duchy Chancellorship was a lucrative post
and there was intense competition for it.
Money could be made in ways which would now be considered corrupt, but
were considered normal at this time.
There is little doubt that Sir John set about building his own
fortune. Besides his rooms in the
Savoy, he had a country mansion at Wanstead, and hired a "very fair
house" not far from Whitehall. His
main residence however was Pymms in Edmonton, where there is still a Park of
that name. Pymms belonged to the
Cecils, but was leased to Sir John on the lives of himself his wife and his son
John at a very low rent.
In 1616, Chamberlain again gives tribute to
Dackombe's skills in land dealing and his connection with Lord Villiers when he
writes that Somerset's land were all given away,and "Lord Villiers had
Sherbourne, but resigning it, he hath a booke granted that they say by Sir John
Dackombes means will rise to the value of near £80,000." [25]
At about this time, Dackombe appointed Edward
Nicholas as his secretary. This was
Edward's first important engagement in his career leading to his eventual
position as Secretary of State. Edward
was the son of John Nicholas, solicitor and steward to the Earl of
Pembroke. Sir John referred to them
both as his kinsmen. The exact
relationship is not known, but a transcript of the parish register for
Winterbourne Earls in Wiltshire, the home of the Nicholas family, has Edward's
grandfather marrying Mrs Ann Dicar in 1559. Possibly this is an error for Dicam
- another spelling variation of Dackombe.
Sir John valued Edward, since he wrote to him when Edward was ill,
reassuring him that his post would not be filled by anyone else during his
illness[26].
Sir John was apparently about to enjoy the
fruits of his ambition when he was taken ill and died of a "lethargy or
drowsy disease" in January 1617/182 [7]
Sir John's will made just before he died left
substantial legacies and incomes to his wife and children, his brothers and
sisters, and his servant Edward Nicholas.
Income was to be derived from his annuity of £1000 pa from the Earl of
Salisbury, his Duchy fines and his manors.
Lands mentioned include Moones Park of Henstridge Somerset, Pymms at
Edmonton, Wormeswell and Vowells in Motcombe, Combe Farm in Abbotscombe, lands
in Okeden, Maidstone College in Kent, the Rectory of Colby in Lincoln, lands in
Thirsk and elsewhere in York, copyhold land in West Ham, lands in Pawlesbury,
tenements in the Savoy, lands in Derby, and the manors of Templecombe,
Abbascombe, Endeston, Hengstridge, Whitchurch, Horton Ferrers in Somerset and
Wilts[6].
He had also however borrowed money to pay for
these land deals, and Chamberlain wrote that he left 13 or 14 hundred pounds of
land but 7 or 8 thousand pounds of debt [27].
His two brothers Nicholas and William, two of the executors of his will,
were soon in financial difficulties.
They are named in at least fifty Chancery Bills either as defendants
against Sir John's creditors or as complainants trying to recover money owed to
him.
William Dackombe was confined to the Fleet
prison in 1627 for debt and pleaded to his kinsman Edward Nicholas (Sir John's
former secretary) for help[28].
Nicholas Dackombe who had married Melior, daughter of Sir John's wife by
her first marriage (see Fig.3) moved to Richmond in Surrey probably also to get
help from Edward Nicholas who lived there and whose career was
flourishing. Nicholas and Melior
Dackombe had 10 children (described as destitute in 1625 [1]) and were buried
at Richmond in 1638 and 1639.
It is difficult to judge from this distance
in time, but it seems that Nicholas and William Dackombe's difficulties were of
their own making rather than because of Sir John's debts. William Dackombe had
always needed small sums of money from Sir John's secretary[29], and he was in
trouble for debt as early as 1614[30].
They mortgaged the farm at Abbotscombe and had not kept up the
repayments despite being given the money for this purpose by Sir John's
wife. The farm was repossessed by the
crown and subsequently sold to a sequence of purchasers. Nicholas Dackombe and his son William
conducted a prolonged battle in Chancery over the ownership of the farm, but
the suit was finally dismissed in 1658 [31].
Sir John's wife, Lady Melior Dackombe
continued to live at Pymms, Edmonton, until her death in 1646 and she was
buried in Edmonton church. For 5 years,
she had given Nicholas £300 a year in cash to repay the Abbotscombe mortgage,
on condition that he made over the farm to his wife, who was her daughter by
her first husband [1]. But Nicholas had
borrowed much more than she knew, and her money and efforts to secure her
daughter's future were in vain.
Lady Melior's will is virtually an inventory
of her household goods at Pymms which shows that it was a substantial mansion,
even though she comments that she had not so much to leave as formerly, as her
house had lately been broken into several times. She left all her goods to her little grandchild Robert Dackombe
[7]. Pymms was re-let by the Cecil
family after Lady Melior's death at a much higher rent.
Sir John's son, John Dackombe, seems to have led a relatively quiet life, avoiding the financial problems of his uncles and the upheaval of the civil war. He was entered to the Middle Temple by his father when he was born, but gave up his chambers in 1632 at the age of 25[12]. He was with his mother at Edmonton in February 1641 when he was third in the list of those taking the protestation oath. His wife was named as Mary in his mother's will, but his assumed marriage to Mary Hudson in August 1641 (Fig.3) is based solely on the register of St Peter, Paul's Wharf. He was still at Edmonton in 1649 when he was assessed for payment of £200 with his brother-in-law Henry Neville[32], but he died at nearby Tottenham High Cross in 1665, administration being granted to his son Robert[10].
[NOTE added May 2004: it is now believed that
Sir John’s son died about 1644 – see notes of his life]
1.
Chancery Bill 1625 Dackombe v Cason; C2 ChasI D39/45
2.
The Visitation of Dorset 1623, ed. Rylands & Paul, p72
3.
1581 Robert Moone of Melcombe Regis, PCC Darcy 38
4.
Sir Tresham Lever, "The House of Pitt", London 1947
5.
1618 Dorothy Dackombe of Edmonton Middlesex; PCC Meade 38
6.
1618 Sir John Dackombe; PCC Meade 19
7.
1644 Melior Dackombe of Edmonton Middlesex; PCC Twisse 4
8.
1640 Nicholas Dackombe of Sheen Surrey; PCC admon to son William
9.
1655 Nicholas Dackombe of Holt, Leics; PCC admon to sister Melior Boone
10. 1665 John Dackombe of Tottenham; PCC
admon to son Robert
11. Parish registers of Templecombe, SOM;
Richmond SRY, Stowell, DOR; Edmonton MDX; etc
12. Admission register and minutes of parliament
of the Middle Temple
13. Calendar of the Cecil MSS vol 7
14. ibid. vol 21
15. Alan Hayns "Robert 1st Earl
of Salisbury" London 1989 p79
16. "The Letters of John
Chamberlain" ed N.E.McClure Greenwood Press, 1939 vol.1 p354, 362
17. Calendar of the Cecil MSS vol 22 p1
18. ibid p1 and p11
19. "Life and Letters of Bacon" ed
Spedding, vol 6 p5,116,117
20. "The Letters of John
Chamberlain" ed N.E.McClure Greenwood Press, 1939 vol.1 p500
21. "Parliaments of England
1213-1702" Eyre & Spottiswode 1878
22. Calendar of State Papers Domestic,
1611-1618 p225
23. "The Letters of John
Chamberlain" ed N.E.McClure Greenwood Press, 1939 vol.1 p599-602
24. ibid vol.2 p7
25. ibid vol.2 p25
26. Calendar of State Papers Domestic,
1611-1618 p400
27. "The Letters of John Chamberlain"
ed N.E.McClure Greenwood Press, 1939 vol.2 p133
28. Calendar of State Papers Domestic,
vol.LIX, 46
29. Donald Nicholas "Mr.Secretary
Nicholas" London 1955
30. Calendar of State Papers Domestic,
1611-1618 p242
31. Chancery decrees and orders, 1658, C33/211
32. Calendar of State Papers Domestic,
Committee for Advance of Money, 1642-1656
return to records of Sir John go to Part 1 Figs 1 & 2 Fig 3