Stepleton Manor and the Dackombe Family

Stepleton Iwerne lies 3 miles north of Blandford where a marked detour of the A350 shows how a lord of the manor once diverted the highway around his estate.  There is no village there now, just the church and manor house. Thomas Dackombe acquired the manor c1370 by marrying the heiress, Agnes de Stupelton - a ploy at which the family excelled – and they remained in possession for over two hundred years.

Stepleton House privately owned ©Copyright Mike Searle

Thomas soon became of importance in Dorset, coroner, sheriff, tax collector and escheator. In 1382 he was “too busy to go on the king’s business to Portugal” wisely keeping out of the politics of Richard II. He was knighted by 1398. But the Stepleton pedigree from the 17^th century Visitation does not begin with Thomas. Instead, it is headed by John, born about 20 years after Thomas died. So what was John’s relation to Thomas and where did Thomas come from?

Eight miles north of Stepleton, Richard Dackombe of Motcombe had a son John bc1570 who became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Greenwood Tree vol.34 (3) p.89). How was he connected with Stepleton, as well as the other Dackombe families included in the Visitations - at Corfe Castle, Winterborne Kingston and Fishtoft in Lincolnshire?

To answer these questions, it is necessary to go back to the earliest records of the family in England. Arriving shortly after the Norman Conquest, the family first settled and derived their name from Daccombe near Torquay, but between 1250 and 1370 nearly all known records are from the Isle of Wight.

Not until 1370 did they move to the mainland, when John and Thomas of Brading IoW, probably brothers, purchased adjacent manors near Chilworth just north of Southampton. Thomas sold his manor immediately and married the Stepleton heiress.

John remained at Chilworth manor and also became of importance in his County serving on juries and collecting tax. But he was associated with the rebellion against the new King Henry IV, and lost some of his privileges.

Chilworth Manor – now a hotel

For the rest of the century after the deaths c1415 of Thomas of Stepleton and John of Chilworth, most known Dackombe records concern these two manors, which remained in the possession of their separate families.

At Stepleton, Thomas was followed by three generations named William and then came John, head of the Stepleton pedigree. Curiously however John’s son and probably John himself also held Chilworth. How did the founder of the Stepleton pedigree come to possess Chilworth as well?

The answer is believed to be that John was not descended from the previous Stepleton owners, but was the son of John and Christian Dackombe of Chilworth. Perhaps Thomas’ Stepleton line died out and John inherited as next heir. Is this why he named both of his first two sons Thomas? In any event, his descendants united the ownership of both manors for the first time.

Descendants of John of Stepleton

Fig.1 Descendants and origin of John of Stepleton c1435-1517

Eldest son, Thomas

Thomas would have inherited Stepleton had he not died three years before his father. So the manor descended to his eldest son and so on until it came to Thomas’ gr.grandson James c1550-1628.  James was a bit of an amateur scientist and bequeathed all his books and instruments to his servant CLOTWORTHY. Perhaps because of this hobby, he needed money and sold Stepleton to his cousin Robert (see Fig 1) retiring to his manor of Little Fontmell.

Another of Thomas’ sons was a collector of rare books and obligingly inscribed one with his date of birth 1496, a great help in dating the Stepleton pedigree.

Second son – also Thomas

Corfe Castle is 20 miles from Stepleton, and here early in the 16^th C, Thomas Dackombe married the heiress Elizabeth CLAVELL continuing the Dackombe tradition of marrying wealth. They lived in the centre of the village in what is now Morton House Hotel and founded the Corfe pedigree of the Visitations

Could Thomas be the second son of John of Stepleton?

Morton House Hotel in Corfe Castle

The Corfe Castle arms quarter those of Stepleton and can still be seen at Morton House, so the family certainly descended from Stepleton. Second son Thomas of Stepleton was born around 1460, so if he went to Corfe he would have married at about 40 and died about 80. These are high but not implausible ages so it seems very likely that Thomas of Corfe Castle was the second son of John of Stepleton, though no known source draws this conclusion.

Third son – John

John was born about 1465 and acquired property in Mapouder and Blandford, but in 1527 he leased a farm at Horton, ten miles west of Stepleton, from the priory there.

Only one of his sons is known, another John born about 1500. In a lawsuit of 1545 he was called a “most comberous wilful & seditious person” but he served under Capt. ROGERS of Brianston in the brief battles in 1549 near Exeter in the so-called “Prayer Book rebellion” and was wounded by an arrow in the face and died c1556. 

He probably married Joan HALSWELL of Goathurst in Somerset – another wealthy family – and this may have been the source of the wealth of their eldest son Robert who purchased Stepleton and still left £900 cash in his will.

Robert left Stepleton to his nephew Sir John in 1610 who soon sold it to a relation of his wife Melior PITT thus ending the 230 year Dackombe reign.

Was there a fourth son Henry?

The Stepleton pedigree in the visitation of Dorset names only three sons of John, but the will of the eldest son and other documents provide compelling evidence that there was a fourth son named Henry.

Henry probably married Christian MORGAN of Chitterne in Wiltshire around 1500, which is the right date to be the parent of Bryan of Winterborne Kingston and John of Fishtoft, the founders of the two remaining Visitation Dackombe pedigrees. Bryan and John were brothers, and significantly both named their son and heir Henry

Conclusions

Thomas Dackombe who acquired Stepleton in 1370 was from Brading on the Isle of Wight.  One hundred years later, Stepleton manor passed to John of Chilworth, a descendant of Thomas’ brother. John’s descendants founded the Dackombe families at Stepleton, Corfe Castle, Horton, Winterbourne Kingston, and Fishtoft in Lincolnshire,

Details of source documents can be found in two articles to be published in SDNQ March 2011.