♂Edmond Yorke

Edmond Yorke (died before 17 April 1615) was a yeoman of Cotton End, near Northampton, England, and the father of Dorothy, the first wife of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. He named Thomas Dudley one of the four overseers of his will. He was the tenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Dorothy Yorke.

His will

Edmond Yorke made his will on 18 November 1614, describing himself as “Edmonde Yorke of Cotton End in the County of Northampton, yeoman”, and asked to be buried in the churchyard of Hardingston. He died before 17 April 1615. The will was proved on 17 April; the printed abstract gives the year as 1614 with a query. It names his wife Katharyne, his eldest son Nathaniel, his second son Bartholomew and a son Joseph, whom he made executor with his wife.

To Nathaniel he left “a certain bowl called the ‘mazzar’”, a mazer^W, to be handed over after Katharyne’s death. To “my daughter Dudley” he left “one guilt bole” and to “my daughter Greene” a silver bowl, and he left money and a silver spoon to each of three grandchildren, Samuel Dudley, Abigail Greene and Anne Dudley, to be paid at twenty-one. He also left small sums to his servants, to the poor of West Cotton and East Cotton, and six shillings and eight pence “towards the repair of the Cawsye leading from my house to Northampton”. His overseers were Robert Tanfield, Thomas Dudley, William Sharpe and Lewes Thomas.

The will does not give the forename of “my daughter Dudley”. She is identified as Dorothy, the wife of Thomas Dudley, through her children: the register of All Saints, Northampton, records the baptism of Samuel, son of Thomas Dudley, on 30 November 1608, and Thomas Dudley stood as an overseer. The genealogist Henry F. Waters, who printed the will in 1893, wrote that it looked as if he had found the will of the father of Thomas Dudley’s wife. No record names Edmond Yorke’s parents or gives his birth.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Dorothy and her son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). According to the published family history and genealogical dictionary, one runs through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844); the other through Samuel’s daughter Dorothy Dudley to Anna Smith. Nathaniel Dudley and Anna Smith married, and the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).