From Acquigny, near Louviers, Normandy. “Le Seigneur d’Acquigny appears in Tailleur’s Chronicles of Normandy.” Herveius de Acquigny occurs 1058 (Morice, Histoire Bret. Preuves, i. 439). Roger de Akeny, thirteenth century, held fiefs from the Honour of Peveril of London (Testa de Nevill). This family was numerous, and of great importance in England, as the records show.”—The Norman People. In the time of Henry III. Ralph de Akeny gave some lands in Norfolk to the “Pi or de Petra”: and about 1272 Roger Dakeney held a fourth part of Northwold, in the same county, of Earl Warren; and Domina Johanna de Dakeneye was of Suffolk. Baldwin de Akeny, Lord of Holkham, and his son Thomas, also appear in Kent, where Dom. John de Akeny was a land owner in Wittlesford Hundred.—Rot. Hundredorum. “Several generations of Dakeny, from Edward I. to 1390, were lords of a sixth part of the barony of Cainho, in Bedfordshire.”—Glover's Derby. Robert Dakeny, one of the Lords of Clophill and Kannho, also held Lathbury and Little Filgrave in Buckinghamshire. He was knight of the shire for Bedford in 1316; and one of the Commissioners for raising foot-soldiers. Roger Dakeny, of Bucks, is also mentioned.—Palgrave's Parliamentary Writs. Chancy records a family of Dakins, that lasted for some generations, in Hertfordshire, that is believed to have been the same.

The name is said to survive under various disguises, more or less uncouth, such as Dakins, Dakeyne, Ducking, Dawkin, Dakyn, Deakinne, &c. “A family of Dakeyne was settled at Biggin Grange, in Derbyshire; and one of its members married Katherine, daughter of Patric Schange or Strange of Edinburgh, a favourite Maid of Honour to Mary Queen of Scots, and reputed to have attended her to the scaffold. This may be queried, since she was married before that event, in fact her son John was bom in the same year. Her luckless mistress left her four hundred francs by her draft will made at Sheffield, but as this sum does not appear in her last testament it was probably given to Katherine on her marriage. The descendants of her eldest son John are the families of Deakin, or Dakeyne, late of Bagthorp Hall, co. Notts. The motto “Strike, Dakyns, the Devil’s in the Hempe,” was granted to General Arthur Dakyns of Linton (East Riding) in 1563, and if generals then commanded on the water as well as on the land, it may allude to some most gallant hacking at the enemy’s hempen cords. It certainly is a maritime motto, for the crest presents an arm brandishing a battle-axe out of a naval crown.”—Longstaffe's Darlington. It is a pity that the heralds who gave the motto failed to explain its meaning, or, at all events, that the explanation is lost. It is difficult for the most ardent imagination to conceive a cable possessed by the devil, though perhaps a rope’s end vigorously administered might suggest the idea to the sufferer.

There is an allusion to the Dakeynes of Ashover and Darley Dale in Derbyshire, “people of much note,” in a curious “Elegy upon the Death of all the greatest Gentry in Darley-Dalle, who loved Hunting and Hawking, and several other games.”

“None of my ancient friends I could espy; In Asher parish I could find not one, Old Crich, and Dakin, and ould Hobskinson, They are departed and gone hence away.”

“In 1547 the Earl Marshal issued a warrant for the apprehension of one William Dakyns, a notable dealer in arms and maker of pedigrees ‘for which fault about twenty years past he lost one of his ears.’”—Sir Bernard Burke. He had compiled spurious pedigrees for nearly one hundred families in Essex, Hertford, and Cambridge.