Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 14.djvu/98

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ill. He was ferried down the river to his house in London. On Saturday the 20th he received the sacrament. He died about ten o'clock in the evening of the 21st, and his obit, according to old ecclesiastical custom, was kept on the 22nd. On the afternoon of the 26th his body was conveyed to Westminster by the river, and almost all the nobility of the kingdom witnessed his funeral rites. He had in his will appointed Westminster Abbey as his place of sepulture, and there his body rests now under a splendid monument with alabaster effigies of himself and his wife by his side. He had made his testament on 19 May, and appointed that his feoffees should stand seised of the manors of Winterslow in Wiltshire and of Crichel Gouis in Dorsetshire, of the yearly value of 26l. 13s. 4d., to maintain perpetually three priests, at ten marks a year each, to sing masses for his soul and the souls of his father and mother, two of them in the church where he should be buried, and the third in the parish church of South Petherton, where several of his ancestors were interred. A Latin epitaph was written for him by the poet laureate, Bernard André [q. v.], and was probably inscribed upon his tomb at Westminster, but has long since been defaced. Of the tomb as seen at this day (except that the iron railing adorned with the Daubeney badge, ‘two dragons' wings conjoined by a knot, or,’ which was about it only sixty-three years ago, has since disappeared) a full description will be found in Neale's ‘History of Westminster Abbey,’ ii. 180. The features of Daubeney, as represented in his effigy, agree well with the character given of him by Bernard André for gentleness and humanity. The long straight nose in a line with the receding forehead just relieves the general expression from an appearance of weakness which the forehead alone might otherwise convey. That he was, as Bernard André calls him, ‘merâ simplicitate bonus,’ an honest and simple-minded man, there seems no reason to doubt. In his will he desired to be buried near that splendid chapel which his master, Henry VII (‘whose true servant,’ he says, ‘I have been these twenty-six years and above’), had prepared for his own resting-place. This shows that he had been devoted to Henry's service, not only for some years before he was king, but for a year at least before Richard III's usurpation.

His will also shows that he had been in the king's debt to the extent of 2,000l., of which he had cleared off 200l., leaving the remainder a charge upon his lands in Dorsetshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, and Lincolnshire. He also leaves to his wife the remainder of a lease, which he had from the Knights of St. John, of the manor of Hampton Court. His wife, whose christian name was Elizabeth, was a daughter of Sir John Arundel of Lanhern in Cornwall. She survived him some years, and obtained from Henry VIII the wardship of his son and heir, Henry, the second lord Daubeney, afterwards created Earl of Bridgewater (Cal. Henry VIII, vol. i. No. 1304). Their only other child was a daughter, Cecily, who became the wife of John Bourchier, lord Fitzwarine, afterwards Earl of Bath.

The year of Daubeney's death has hitherto been given as 1507 on the evidence of an inscription on his tomb which is now illegible, but is preserved in Camden's ‘Westminster Abbey.’ The event, however, is distinctly recorded by Bernard André among the occurrences of 1508, and the date of the will, 19 May 23 Hen. VII, is equally unmistakable. The inscription preserved by Camden must have been very inaccurately transcribed, for not only does it make Daubeney die a year too early, but it puts the death of his wife, who survived him, earlier still, viz. 1500. She was certainly alive at least as late as 1513 (ib. ii. 1486).

[Burke's Extinct and Dormant Peerage; Collinson's Somerset, iii. 109; Polydore Vergil; Hall's Chronicle; Gairdner's Memorials of Henry VII; Gairdner's Letters, &c. of Richard III and Henry VII; Leland's Collectanea, iv. 230, 236, 238, 240, 245, 247, 259, 260; Spanish Calendar, vol. i.; Venetian Calendar, vol. i.; Campbell's Materials for the Reign of Henry VII; Halliwell's Letters, i. 179; Anstis's History of the Garter; Will (Bennett, 16) in Somerset House.]

J. G.

DAUBENY, CHARLES, D.C.L. (1745–1827), archdeacon of Salisbury, the second son of George Daubeny, an opulent Bristol merchant, was baptized 16 Aug. 1745, educated at a private school at Philip's Norton, and sent when fifteen years old to Winchester College. Shortly after his admission he had a severe illness which incapacitated him for more than a year, and from which he never entirely recovered. He nevertheless rose to be head boy of the school, and at eighteen gained an exhibition at New College, Oxford, where he afterwards obtained a fellowship. When of age, owing to the death of his father, he came into a considerable fortune, but the precarious state of his health obliged him to live in great retirement. In 1770 he went abroad and derived much benefit from the German mineral springs. In 1771 he visited St. Petersburg, where, by the influence of the Princess Dashkow, whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, he was introduced at court, and made some study of