Sir Robert Danby, (died 1474) was a British justice.
Life
He was the fifth son of Thomas Danby of Danby, Yorkshire, and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Robert Tanfield. He adopted the legal profession, and occurs in the year-books as early as 1431. In 1441, he appeared in a case before the
privy council, and, in 1443, was made
serjeant-at-law, being promoted
king's serjeant soon afterwards.
He seems never to have sat in parliament, but, on 28 June 1452, he was raised to the
bench of common pleas. Being apparently of
Yorkist
The House of York was a cadet branch of the English royal House of Plantagenet. Three of its members became kings of England in the late 15th century. The House of York descended in the male line from Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York, th ...
sympathies, he was on 11 May 1461, immediately after the accession of
Edward IV
Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England ...
, appointed chief justice of common pleas. He was knighted soon afterwards. When
Henry VI regained his throne Danby was, by patent dated 9 October 1470, continued as
chief justice, but when Edward IV returned in the following year Danby ceased to be chief justice.
As he disappears from the list of judges three weeks before the others were removed, the circumstance may be due to his death, and not to his disgrace.
The frequency with which Danby's opinion was quoted suggests that he was a judge of considerable weight. He was the judge in the recovery referred to in
Taltarum's Case
''Taltarum's Case'' is the name given to an English legal case heard in the Court of Common Pleas (England), Court of Common Pleas, with decisions being handed down in 1465 and 1472. The case was long thought to have established the operation of ...
, which gave rise to the doctrine of the
common recovery
A common recovery was a legal proceeding in England that enabled lawyers to convert an entailed estate (a form of land ownership also called a fee tail) into absolute ownership, fee simple. This was accomplished through the use of a series of ...
. In 1473, he joined the Corpus Christi Guild in
York
York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...
. He died in 1474 and was buried there shortly afterward.
Family
He married, first, in 1444, Catherine, daughter of Ralph Fitzrandal, by whom he had no issue, and secondly Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of William Aslaby; by her he had a son, Sir
James Danby, who succeeded to
Thorp Perrow
Snape is a large village in the civil parish of Snape with Thorp in the county of North Yorkshire, England, located about south of Bedale and west of the A1(M) motorway, it has a population of 350. Nearby is Thorp Perrow Arboretum. The nam ...
, Yorkshire, an estate his father had purchased, and died in 1496, and a daughter, Margaret, who married Christopher Barton. His great-grandson, Sir Christopher Danby, was, according to Paget, designed for a peerage by Henry VIII, but the intention was never carried out.
References
1474 deaths
Chief justices of the common pleas
Knights Bachelor
Justices of the common pleas
Serjeants-at-law (England)
Year of birth unknown
Robert
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of ''Hrōþ, Hruod'' () "fame, glory, honour, prais ...
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