George DACRES of Cheshunt
Born: ABT 1533
Died: 30 Sep 1580, Poleworth, Warwickshire, England
Father: Robert DACRES (Master of Requests)
Mother: Elizabeth MANNOCKMarried: Elizabeth CAREW
Children:
1. Margaret DACRES (b. 1563 - d. 1631)
2. Elizabeth DACRES
3. Henry DACRES
4. Thomas DACRES (Sir) (m.1 Catherine Colshill – m.2 Dorothy Pigot – m.3 Anne Barley)
5. Walter DACRES
6. Robert DACRES
7. Son DACRES
Portrait of George Dacres of Cheshunt
by Steven Van der Meulen
Born ABT 1533, only son of Robert Dacres, master of requests, by Elizabeth, dau. of George Monoux of Stoke by Nayland, Suff., wid. of Sir Thomas Denny of How, Norf. Married Elizabeth, dau. of Sir Wymond Carew of Antony, and Martha Denny. Suc. fa. 1543. J.p. Oxon. by 1564, Herts. by 1569, q. by 1574.
From his parents Dacres inherited considerable property, including the manor of Cheshunt and other lands in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Kent, Middlesex and Warwickshire. His will mentions also houses in Aldersgate Street, London and an estate on the borders of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire. His valuable wardship was granted, as his father had wished, to his mother’s brother-in-law Sir Anthony Denny, and in 1545, the year after the grant of the wardship, the boy’s marriage with Elizabeth Carew was arranged. Elizabeth was Sir Anthony´s niece.
His sister Elizabeth married Henry Peckham.
Dacres was presumably brought into Parliament for Castle Rising through the influence of the elder branch of the Denny family with Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, who owned the patronage there. The only reference to any parliamentary activity by Dacres is his membership of the committee considering the bill for the river Lea, 26 May 1571.
He made his will ‘in perfect health’ in Dec 1579, and died at Poleworth, Warwickshire on 30 Sep following. He left £500 to each of his daughters Elizabeth and Margaret, and divided his non-entailed lands among his three younger sons. The eldest son Henry having died in 1560, the heir was Henry’s brother Thomas, aged 23 when his father died. Dacres bequeathed a horse, ‘the simple gift of a poor friend’, to Lord Burghley, whose house at Theobalds was near Cheshunt. Two Hertfordshire ladies received ‘enough velvet to make a kirtle’. A codicil, dictated from his deathbed, asked his heir to remember Lawrence Norton, the servant who had cared for him in his last illness. The dying man ‘gave with his own hand to Mistress Frances Goodere a book in English called The Way of Life’. The will was proved in Nov 1581. Dacres was buried at Cheshunt.
His daughter Margaret Dacres married George Garrard of Dorney Court, Buckinghamshire (b. 1559 - d. 1591) on 17 Sep 1585 and had by him two daughters, Anne (b. 1585/6- d. 18 Apr 1627) and Frances. In about 1592, she remarried, taking as her husband Henry Savile of Merton College, Oxford. Although he did not live full time at Merton, when he was there he flouted the rule against having his wife with him. They had two children, Henry (d. 1604) and Elizabeth (b. 1595 - d. AFT 1651) (m. Sir John Sedley, 2° Bt. of Aylesford). In 1595, the family moved from Oxford to Eton, where Savile was provost. He was knighted in 1604, by which time he was engaged in translating what became the King James Bible. Sir Henry Savile was buried in the Eton College Chapel, where there is a simple stone in his memory, but Margaret erected another monument to him in the Merton College Chapel at Oxford and he also appears on her monument in St. Nicholas Hurst, Berkshire.
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