♀Mary Purefoy

Mary Purefoy (living in 1588) was an Englishwoman of the Purefoy family of Shalston, Buckinghamshire, and the wife of Thomas Thorne, a gentleman of Yardley Hastings, Northamptonshire. Her daughter Susanna was the mother of Thomas Dudley^W, later deputy governor and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Susanna Thorne and Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653).

Family

Mary was most likely a daughter of Edward Purefoy of Shalston and his wife Anne Fettiplace. Her brother John Purefoy of Shalston, making his will on 4 May 1579, remembered “My cousin Robert Thorne … Thomas Dudley … My nephew Edward Thorne”. Robert and Edward were her sons, and the Thomas Dudley of the will was perhaps her grandson, then two years old.

Marriage and children

Mary married Thomas Thorne, whose family name the parish register of Yardley Hastings wrote as Dorne; the Purefoy pedigree recorded at the 1619 heraldic visitation^W of Leicestershire notes “Mary mar. to Tho. Thorne of Yardley in Com. Northamp.” Their children were baptized at Yardley Hastings over eleven years: Anna, “filia Thome Dorne”, on 1 November 1550, Katherine in 1551, Arthur in 1552, William in 1558, Susanna in March 1559/60, Robert in 1560 and Isabel in 1561. A son Edward has no baptism in the register, which has none for the years 1553 to 1557.

Widowhood

Thomas made his will on 29 October 1588. He left his “loving wife” Mary £10 out of the manor of Syresham, close to her family’s home at Shalston, and asked that their son Robert, if he “should come home”, “be obedient unto his Mother”. He also left £10 to the children of his daughter Susan Dudley, by then a widow, who was probably Mary’s daughter as well. Thomas was buried at Yardley Hastings on 9 November 1588. The records do not give the date of Mary’s death.

Susanna’s son Thomas grew up without his father. According to Cotton Mather^W, the boy was educated by a “Mrs. Purefoy”, whom a history of the Dudley family published in 1886 identifies as Anne (Pell), the wife of Mary’s brother Richard Purefoy.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Susanna, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley 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 parents

The will of John Purefoy of Shalston, dated 4 May 1579 and proved 25 May 1579 in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, is printed in abstract by Waters in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register 49 (1895), p. 507. Waters calls the testator “son and heir of Edward Purefoy of Shireford, Esq. (Leic.) who was born at Effield, June 13, 1494, and died at Shalston, June 1, 1558”. Because the will calls Edward Thorne “my nephew”, and Edward and Robert are sons in Thomas Thorne’s will, Mary is taken to be John’s sister. The Purefoy pedigree in the 1619 visitation of Leicestershire (Harleian Society, vol. 2, 1870) gives “Mary mar. to Tho. Thorne of Yardley in Com. Northamp.” (p. 33) and “Mary wife to Tho. Thorne of Yardley Hastings” (p. 36). Helen Koues’s Historical Pamphlet No. 1 (1903) states that “Mary Purefoy, sister of John Purefoy of Shaldeston, married Thomas Thorne of Yardley Hastings, Northamptonshire.” Anne Fettiplace as her mother rests on the visitation pedigrees and later compiled descents alone; no will names Mary’s mother.

Mother of Susanna

No record names Mary as the mother of Susanna or of the other children. Thomas’s will of 1588 names his wife as Mary, and her brother’s will of 1579 calls Edward Thorne his nephew. The original Purefoy pedigree in Harleian MS 1189, as Koues gives it, reads “Susanna Thorne married Roger”; the 1869 printing reads “Rogers”. The printed visitation pages that name Mary do not list her children.

The Thomas Dudley of 1579

Dean Dudley’s note on John Purefoy’s will takes the “Thomas Dudley” of the legacy to be the future governor, who was baptized at Yardley Hastings on 12 October 1576.

“Mrs. Purefoy”

Mary Kingsbury Talcott (New England Historical and Genealogical Register 66, 1912, p. 341) notes that Cotton Mather says Thomas Dudley was educated by “Mrs. Purefoy”. Dean Dudley’s History of the Dudley Family (1886) identifies her as Anne (Pell) Purefoy, wife of Richard Purefoy, “third son of Edward Purefoy, of Shalston”, and says she “looked after his education. Perhaps she was his aunt.”