♂John Denton

John Denton was an Englishman of Fifield in Berkshire in the fourteenth century. Through his son Thomas he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Denton.

Family

According to the family’s pedigree, John was the son of Thomas Denton and his wife, a daughter of Sir John Wike of Wike, and the grandson of another John Denton, at the head of a line known as the Dentons of Apleton and Eaton in Berkshire. His son, Thomas Denton of Fifield, married Agnes Baldington, a daughter of William Baldington of Shipton in Oxfordshire, and is dated by the pedigree to the eleventh year of the reign of Richard II, 1387–1388. The same pedigree gives John a wife, Joan, a sister and coheir of Sir Thomas de la Launde, but that Joan belonged to a Lincolnshire family of Dentons more than a century later, and the name of John’s wife is not known. The records do not give the dates of his birth or death.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas Denton, Thomas’s son Thomas Denton, the younger Thomas’s son John Denton, John’s daughter Alice Denton, her son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and Thomas Dudley’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

The Denton pedigree

The Denton pedigree in the Oxfordshire heraldic visitation^W (The Visitations of the County of Oxford, 1566, 1574 and 1634, Harleian Society vol. 5, 1871, p. 228) is the main source for John and the only one for his parents. It is headed “Denton of Apleton & Eaton in com. Barks.” and runs from John Denton to Thomas Denton, whose wife was a “daur. to Sr John Wike of Wike”, then to “John Denton of ffifield in Com. Berk.”, and then to “Thomas Denton of ffifeild in com. Oxon. A°. 11. R. 2.”, the husband of “Agnes daur. to Wm. Baldington of Shipton in Com. Oxon.” The Victoria County History of Berkshire (vol. 4, ‘Appleton’) says that “The Dentons sprang from a family established at Fyfield”, but its footnotes cite only this pedigree. A visitation pedigree was compiled from the family’s own account, long after the events.

His wife

The Oxfordshire chart and the Berkshire visitation (Harleian Society vol. 56, p. 116) both name John’s wife as “Johanne sister & Coheire to Sr. Thomas De la launde, knighte”. Sir Thomas de la Launde, of the Lincolnshire family of Ashby de la Launde, was born in 1466 (Edward Trollope, Sleaford and the Wapentakes of Flaxwell and Aswardhurn, 1872, pp. 194–196). A. C. E. Welby, writing on the manor of Denton in Lincolnshire Notes & Queries (vol. 9, 1906–1907, pp. 230–231), shows that Sir Thomas’s sister and coheir Joan was the wife of William Denton, of a Lincolnshire family, and that in 1522, as the wife of Thomas Kylham, she joined her son in selling de la Launde property. A woman living in 1522 cannot have been the mother of a man of 1387–1388, so the heralds most likely borrowed her from the Lincolnshire Dentons. This page leaves John’s wife unnamed.