♀Margery Moton

Margery Moton was an English gentlewoman of the fifteenth century who married William Purefoy, of the family that held Shirford in Warwickshire and Shalston in Buckinghamshire. Through her son John she was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. She was the fifteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John Purefoy.

Family

William Purefoy married Margery Moton, who is said to have been a daughter of Sir Robert Moton, a knight of Peckleton in Leicestershire. They most likely had two sons, Philip, the elder, and John.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son John, John’s son Nicholas Purefoy, Nicholas’s son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, her daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and Thomas’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

Her father and marriage

Her parentage and marriage come from the Purefoy pedigree that John Nichols printed from Harleian MS 1049 in The History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester, vol. IV part 2 (1811), p. 599: “William Purefoy, of Shalston = Margery, daughter of sir Robert Moton, of Peckleton, knt.”, followed by “1. Philip Purefoy, died Sept. 16, 1466; buried at Badsley Clinton” and “2. John Purefoy”. The pedigree is laid out as a chart, and where each name hangs on it is not fully certain. Philip’s own will is dated 26 March 1468, which rules out the year 1466.

The Motons of Peckleton

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. II, 1912, p. 8, under Basset of Sapcote) names a Sir Robert Moton of Peckleton as the second husband of Alice, the elder daughter and coheir of Ralph, Lord Basset of Sapcote; Alice was thirty when her father died, in the reign of Richard II, and was then the wife of Sir Laurence Dutton. Whether Margery’s father was this Sir Robert or a later man of the same name is not settled.