[DARCY, Sir Conyers] (1570-1654). 5th Baron Darcy de Knayth and 4th Baron Conyers.
Contemporary petition to Charles I, 1 page 4to in a fine cursive hand (a few small holes, but in good condition), 1640.

'... shewing ... that the Darcyes ... have ... especially the Darcies of the North, beene barons and Peeres ... in succession for 15. discents or thereabouts, having their sowrce or rise of honour from king Henry the seacond [altered from 'Richard the first'] ... untill Thomas Lord Darcy received the fatall blow of attainder of Treason in the 28th yeare of king Henry the Eight', listing the high offices of state they have held, adding that 'the pet[itione]r himself ... doth as yett receive ... a pencion for services done by his Ancestor in the famous battaile of Poictiers', and explaining that Thomas 'being a feeble aged man', had been forced by the Rebels (in the Pilgrimage of Grace) to give countenance to their disordered proceedings, and although the attainder of Thomas, the petitioner's great- grandfather, was reversed by Edward VI in favour of Thomas's son Sir George, who was the petitioner's great-uncle, 'to the great greife of the said petitioner some doubt is conceived, whether the said title and honour of Lord Darcy bee not now determyned by the late death [in 1635] of John Lord Darcy', the last male descendant of Sir George, 'which error, if any bee ... was not knowne to the petitioner untill of late', so that he and his heirs, 'being also discended of one of the daughters & heires of the Lord Conyers', may be 'frustrated of the said title ... unless yo[u]r Ma[jes]tie would ... commiserate his case' in imitation of Edward VI.

In 1641 two bills were introduced in Parliament, one on 10 August to the petitioner to become Lord Darcy, and one on the 12th to become Lord Conyers. It was held in 1903 that these two bills had determined the abeyances of Darcy de Knayth [1332] and of Conyers [1509], both descending to the petitioner through his mother, that is to say, independently of Thomas's attainder. The barony of Thomas (ca1467-1537) as Darcy of Darcy was a new creation in 1509, but the petitioner was afraid that the taint of blood had been reversed only for his great-uncle's descendants. Strictly speaking the petitioner was not Lord Conyers de juré until 1644, when his aunt died. According to the Complete Peerage, this petition, and the bills of 1641, have been previously known only in the much briefer version in Dugdale's Baronage (1675, vol. 1 page 375) on which the decision in 1903 relied. Dugdale, however, includes fuller details of the descent through the female line.
[No: 25786]