Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/149

 mained to witness her coronation at St. Denis on 5 Nov. (ib. No. 5560). In February 1515, on the meeting of parliament, Docwra was made a trier of petitions from Gascony (ib. vol. ii. No. 119). Next month it was again proposed to send him, with Fisher, bishop of Rochester, Sir Edward Poynings, and Dr. Taylor, to Rome. 10 March was fixed as the date of their departure, and, what is still more extraordinary, large sums are entered in ‘the king's book of payments’ for their costs, paid in advance (800l. apiece to Fisher, Docwra, and Poynings, and 266l. 13s. 4d. to Dr. Taylor), when this embassy also was stopped, evidently, as Polydore Vergil expected that it would be, by Wolsey's interference (ib. No. 215, and pp. 1466–7); for on 1 May following we find, from a letter of the Venetian ambassador Pasqualigo, that Docwra dined with the king at Greenwich (No. 411). In November he was among those present at Westminster Abbey when Wolsey received his cardinal's hat (No. 1153). On 21 Feb. 1516 he obtained for himself and the hospital a license to hold the prebend of Blewbury, Berkshire, in mortmain (No. 1575). In May 1516 he is mentioned as attending on the Scotch ambassadors (No. 1870), and also as acting as interpreter in an interview between the Venetian ambassador and the Duke of Suffolk (Venet. Cal. vol. ii. No. 730). In the end of April 1517 he seems to have been at Terouenne, on a commission which he had along with others to settle mercantile disputes with the French (Cal. Henry VIII, vol. ii. Nos. 3197, 3861). 40l. was paid by the king for his expenses on this occasion (ib. p. 1475). In September 1518, on the arrival of a French embassy in England, he was one of the lords appointed to meet with them (No. 4409). Next month he was one of a return embassy sent to France charged to take the oath of Francis I to the new treaty of alliance, by which the dauphin was to marry the Princess Mary (Nos. 4529, 4564). They crossed from Dover to Calais in twenty-six ships in November (ib. vol. iii. No. 101), and received the French king's oath at Notre Dame on 14 Dec. (vol. ii. No. 4649). The ‘diets’ allowed to Docwra on this occasion were 100l. for fifty days (ib. pp. 1479–80). He was also one of the commissioners who redelivered Tournay to the French in February 1519 on receipt of fifty thousand francs from Francis I (ib. vol. iii. Nos. 58, 64, 71).

On 8 July 1519 a search was ordered to be made for suspicious characters in London and the suburbs, the districts in and about the city being parcelled out among different commissioners appointed to conduct it. The prior of St. John's was made responsible for the work in Islington, Holloway, St. John Street, Cowcross, Trille Mylle Street (now Turnmill Street), and Charterhouse Lane. The search was actually made on Sunday night, 17 July, and led only in this district to the apprehension of two persons at Islington, and eleven in places nearer the city (ib. No. 365 (1, 6)). Docwra's name also occurs about this time in a list of councillors appointed by Wolsey to sit at Whitehall and hear causes of poor men who had suits in the Star-chamber.

In 1520 he went over with Henry VIII to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and was appointed ‘to ride with the king of England at the embracing of the two kings’ (ib. p. 236). Thence he accompanied Henry to Gravelines to his meeting with the emperor (No. 906). In 1521 he was one of the peers by whom the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham was found guilty of treason (ib. p. 493). In August of the same year he went with Wolsey to Calais, where the cardinal sat as umpire between the French and the imperialists, and afterwards was despatched by him along with Sir Thomas Boleyn to the emperor at Oudenarde, where they kept up a correspondence with the Earl of Worcester and West, bishop of Ely, in France, with a view to arranging a truce (ib. Nos. 1669, 1693–4, 1705–1706). Their efforts in this being unsuccessful, they took leave of the emperor in November, and Docwra fell ill at Bruges on his return (No. 1778). Next year he went in the king's company to meet the emperor on his visit to England between Dover and Calais (No. 2288). A little later he was appointed one of the commissioners for raising a forced loan in the county of Middlesex (ib. No. 2485, iv. 82), which was a regular assessment upon property; and he himself was assessed at 1,000l.

In the parliament which met in April 1523 he was once more appointed a trier of petitions from Gascony—rather a sinecure, probably, when Gascony had been for seventy years lost to the English crown (No. 2956). On 2 Nov. following he was appointed one of the commissioners for the subsidy granted in that parliament (No. 3504). On 25 May 1524, having received a commission from the king for the purpose, he drew up, with the imperial ambassador De Praet, a treaty for a joint invasion of France (vol. iv. Nos. 363, 365). On 12 Feb. 1525 he was again appointed to conduct a search for suspicious characters in the north of London (No. 1082). The next we hear of him is that in the beginning of April 1527 he had fallen dangerously ill (Nos. 3035–3036), and it is probable that he died within the month; for by 30 June Sir William Weston, at Corneto in Italy, had received intelli-