copies still remaining, were largely circulated. His ‘Rosarium, secretissimum philosophorum arcanum comprehendens’ was printed at Geismar in 1647, and again in 1702 in Jac. Magnes's ‘Bibliotheca Chemica Curiosa.’ The most popular of his works would seem to have been the ‘Visio super artem Alchemicam,’ a curious mystical allegory, which was more than once translated into English, and is printed in ‘Ginæceum Chimicum’ (Lyons, 1679) and in the ‘Theatrum Chimicum’ (Geneva, 1651).
[Pits's Hist. de Reb. Angl. p. 871; Brit. Mus. Gen. Cat.; Biographie Universelle.]
DAUBENEY, GILES, Lord (d. 1508), soldier and statesman, was descended from the ancient Norman family of de Albini, whose ancestor Robert de Todeni came to England with the Conqueror and built Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire on the confines of Lincolnshire. The head of the house in the days of Edward I and his son are said to have been summoned to parliament as barons. But they were only summoned to councils, and there is no appearance that the title was held by any member of the family before Giles was created a baron by Henry VII. He was the eldest son of William Daubeney, who had livery of his lands in the twenty-fourth year of Henry VI, by his wife Alice, daughter of Jenkin Stourton. He was probably born at South Petherton in Somersetshire, where his father seems to have been continually resident. In 1475 he went over to France with Edward IV, from whom he obtained a license before going to make a trust-deed of his lands in the counties of Somerset and Dorset (Patent, 15 Edw. IV, pt. 2, m. 19). He was then designated esquire, and he went in command of four men-at-arms and fifty archers, whose pay for a quarter of a year, with his own included, amounted to 141l. 1s. Soon after he became one of the esquires for the king's body, and two years later, in the seventeenth of Edward IV, he had a grant for life of the custody of the king's park at Petherton, near Bridgewater. M.P. for Somerset in 1477–8, he was knighted before the end of King Edward's reign; so is he designated in a commission for taxing aliens in Somersetshire in the brief reign of Edward V (Patent, 27 April, Edw. V, No 2 in dorso; see Calendar in Appendix to Ninth Report of Dep.-Keeper of Pub. Records). He was also present at the coronation of Richard III on 6 July 1483 (Excerpta Historica, 384), and his name appears in the commissions of the peace for Somerset as late as 26 Aug. in that year (Patent, 1 Rich. III, pt. 1, m. 7, in dorso; see Calendar, as above). But having been from the first a well-wisher of the Earl of Richmond, he was consulted before any one else by Reginald, afterwards Sir Reginald, Bray [q. v.] as to the projected invasion in his favour, planned in concert with the Duke of Buckingham. On the failure of Buckingham's rebellion he, like many others, fled to Richmond in Britanny, and he was consequently attainted in Richard's parliament (Parl. Rolls, vi. 246). The custody of Petherton Park was granted to Lord Fitzhugh (Patent, 1 Rich. III, pt. 3, No. 114), and Daubeney's lands in Somersetshire, Lincolnshire, and Cornwall were confiscated (Patents, 1 Rich. III, pt. 3, No. 200; 2 Rich. III, pt. 1, No. 101, and pt. 3, No. 37).
His fortunes were retrieved when Henry VII became king. His attainder was reversed in Henry's first parliament, and he became a privy councillor. On 2 Nov. he was appointed master of the mint, an office in which Bartholomew Reed of London, goldsmith, as the practical ‘worker of monies,’ was associated with him in survivorship. The mastership of the king's harthounds had been granted to him on 12 Oct. before. He had also the offices of constable of Winchester Castle, constable of Bristol Castle, steward of the lands of the duchy of Lancaster in Hampshire and Dorsetshire, steward of the lands of the earldom of Salisbury in Somersetshire, and various minor appointments given him about the same time (Rolls of Parl. vi. 354). On 7 March 1486 he was appointed lieutenant of Calais for a term of seven years in reward for his services to the king in exile and the dangers he had encountered on his behalf; and on the 12th of the same month he was created Baron Daubeney with succession in tail male. On 15 Dec. following he was named at the head of a great embassy to treat for a league with Maximilian, king of the Romans; and some of his correspondence with Maximilian's ambassadors in March following has been preserved. About this time, or at least as it is supposed, before 27 May 1487, he was made a knight of the Garter (Beltz, Memorials of the Garter, clxvii). On 25 Nov. 1487 he was present at the coronation of Elizabeth of York at Westminster—an event which had been delayed for two years, and in anticipation of which he had received on 17 Dec. 1485 a commission to buy eight coursers in Flanders to draw the ‘chares’ at the pageant. On 20 Dec. 1487 he was appointed one of the chamberlains of the receipt of the exchequer. He appears about this time to have gone on an embassy to France, from which having returned, he was with the
