DOUGHTY, Michael, of Lathom; later of Thornley, Lancs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1558-1603, ed. P.W. Hasler, 1981
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

m. Cecily, da. of Thomas Nelson of Whittington, 4s. 1da. Servant of the 4th, 5th and 6th earls of Derby.1

Offices Held

Biography

Doughty entered the service of Henry, 4th Earl of Derby, by 1587, and became one of the ‘trusted and approved servants and counsellors’ in his household, his actual appointment being that of clerk of the kitchen. It was to the Stanley family that he owed his parliamentary seats. He was appointed to a Commons committee on revising statutes on 28 Mar. 1593.2

The death of the 5th Earl in April 1594, soon after his denunciation of Jesuit intrigues, led to a suggestion that he had been poisoned, and that Doughty’s brother could throw light on the matter. Doughty’s own standing, however, was obviously unaffected, as he became one of the chief feoffees charged with dealing with the estate, and under the 6th Earl he was even more influential, negotiating the claim of the Earl’s nieces to the Stanley estates. By 1606 he was able to buy up some of the former lands of the Derby family, including the manor of Thornley on the Lancashire-Yorkshire border, which the 6th Earl had been forced to sell. Doughty was still alive in 1620. His son John settled at Coln Hall, Lancashire.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: A.H.D.

Notes

  • 1. H. Taylor Hist. Notices of Flint, 127; Vis. Lancs. (Chetham Soc. lxxxii), 64; Lansd. 1218, f. 58; Chetham Soc. xxxi. 23, 58, 106.
  • 2. HMC Hatfield, iv. 517; Chetham Soc. xxv. pp. lvi-lviii; xxxi. 36-7, 60, 83, 148, 191, 214; Salusbury Corresp. ed. Smith, 27, 28, 30, 33, 34-5; Flints. Hist. Soc. Pub. xiv. 2-3, 38-9; Taylor, 106; D’Ewes, 511.
  • 3. HMC Hatfield, iv. 517; VCH Lancs. viii. 34; Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xvi. 268; B. Coward, ‘Stanley Fam. 1385-1651’ (Sheffield Univ. PhD thesis 1968).