arranged at Doncaster, and the king sent a pardon even to the chief offenders But on 6 Jan. following (1537) Henry sent him an imperative summons to come up to London; in reply to which he wrote from Templehurst on the 14th, stating that he had ‘never fainted nor feigned’ in the service of the king and his father within the realm or abroad for about fifty years; but since the meeting at Doncaster he had been confined to his chamber with two diseases, rupture and flux, as several of the council who saw him at Doncaster and the king's own physicians could bear witness.
The country was at that moment in a very dangerous state, a new rebellion having been just begun by Sir Francis Bigod, which Aske and Darcy did their best to stay. Their services were so real that the king pardoned both of them, and encouraged Darcy to victual Pomfret, that his two sons, Sir George and Sir Arthur, might keep it in case of a new rising. Darcy was further assured, by letters addressed to the Earl of Shrewsbury, that if he would do his duty thenceforward it would be as favourably considered as if he had never done amiss. Encouraged by this he wrote to Aske on 10 Feb., asking him to redeliver secretly to Pomfret Castle (for the custody of which Darcy was responsible) all the bows and arrows that he had obtained out of it. The letter unluckily was intercepted, and it told a tale. Information was collected to show that since his pardon Darcy had been guilty of different acts of treason, among which his intimating to the people that there would be a free parliament to consider their grievances was cited in evidence that he was still seeking to promote a change, and that if there were no parliament the rebellious spirit would revive with his approval. Nay, even his recent acts in the king's behalf were construed to his disadvantage; for having given orders to stay the commons till Norfolk came, the words were taken to imply that he only wished them pacified for a season. He was apprehended, brought up to London, and lodged in the Tower, as were several other of the northern leaders at the same time. An indictment found against them on 9 May at York says that they had conspired together in October, first to deprive the king of his royal dignity by disowning his title of supreme head of the church of England, and secondly to compel him to hold a parliament; that they had afterwards committed divers acts of rebellion; that after being pardoned they had corresponded with each other, and that Darcy and others had abetted Bigod's rebellion in January. On these charges he and his old friend, Lord Hussey, were arraigned at Westminster on 15 May before the Marquis of Exeter as lord high steward, and a number of their peers. They were condemned to suffer the old barbarous penalty of treason, but the punishment actually inflicted upon them was decapitation, which Lord Hussey underwent at Lincoln, whither he was conveyed on purpose to strike terror where the insurrection had begun. But Darcy was beheaded on Tower Hill on 30 June. His head was set up on London Bridge, and his body, according to one contemporary writer, was buried at Crutched Friars. But if so, it must have been removed afterwards; at least, if a tombstone inscription may be trusted, it lies with the bodies of other Darcys in the church of St. Botolph without Aldgate (Stow, Survey, ii. 16, ed. 1720).
Darcy was twice married. His first wife was Lady Edith, widow of Ralph, lord Nevill, son of the third Earl of Westmoreland (Cal. Henry VIII, vol. i. No. 367; vol. iii. No. 2221; vol. v. No. 119 (6). She was a daughter of Sir William Sandys of the Vine, afterwards Lord Sandys (Rowland, Hist. Account of the Family of Nevill, pedigree at end), and was alive at least as late as 1522. He afterwards married Dousabella, daughter and heiress of Sir Richard Tempest of Ribblesdale, of whom a letter to her husband written during the northern rebellion is preserved among the Cottonian MSS. (Vespasian, F. xiii. 127 b). His eldest son, Sir George, was restored in blood in the following reign, with the title of Lord Darcy, which descended to his heirs male till it became extinct for lack of issue in 1635.
[Besides authorities quoted in text, Gairdner's Letters, &c., of Richard III and Henry VII (Rolls Ser.); State Papers, Henry VIII, vol. i.; unpublished documents in Record Office; Hall's and Wriothesley's Chronicle; Baga de Secretis in Report III of Dep.-Keeper of Public Records, App. ii. 247; Dugdale's Baronage.]
DARELL or DORELL, WILLIAM (d. 1580), antiquary, canon of Canterbury, was probably a member of the Kentish house of the Darells of Calehill, near Ashford, though his name does not occur in the ordinary pedigrees of the family (Hasted, Kent, iii. 224; Burke, Commoners, i. 133). In April 1554, being already in holy orders, he was appointed by Queen Mary to a prebend in Canterbury Cathedral (Fœdera, xv. 381–2). Some time after this apparently he proceeded M.A. of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. On Elizabeth's accession he, with only three other prebendaries and the dean, assembled to elect Parker as archbishop, and Darell was chosen publicly to declare the election in the cathedral choir and to act as proxy for the chapter
