♂Nicholas Purefoy

Nicholas Purefoy was an English gentleman of Shirford in Warwickshire and Shalston in Buckinghamshire in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Married three times, he was the father of Edward Purefoy of Shalston, and Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, was his great-great-grandson through Edward’s daughter Mary. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Edward Purefoy and Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy.

Family

Nicholas was probably the eldest son and heir of John Purefoy of Shirford, a manor in the parish of Burton Hastings, Warwickshire. John had come into Shirford as heir to his elder brother, Philip Purefoy, who died without children. Philip’s widow, Isabel Brome, then married John Denton.

Wardship and first marriage

His father most likely died while Nicholas was still under age, for in 1491 the crown is said to have granted his wardship, with the right to arrange his marriage, to John Denton, the second husband of his uncle’s widow. A wardship gave the guardian charge of a young heir’s lands until he came of age, and the choice of his wife.

Nicholas Purefoy married Alice Denton, most likely a daughter of John Denton and his wife Isabel Brome, so that his guardian became his father-in-law. Their son Edward Purefoy was the heir and married Anne Fettiplace; their daughters Isabel and Alice are said to have died without children.

Later marriages

The records do not give the date of Alice’s death. Nicholas married twice more: his second wife, Clemence Lydyat, of a Warwickshire family, was the mother of his son Simon Purefoy, and his third, Katharine Brafield, a daughter of Richard Brafield of Buckinghamshire, was the mother of his sons Martin and Luke Purefoy. The date of his own death is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Edward, 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

His family and three marriages

The Purefoy pedigree taken at the 1566 heraldic visitation^W of Buckinghamshire (printed in The Visitation of the County of Buckingham, Harleian Society vol. 58, 1909, pp. 199-200) sets out William Purefoy of Shirford; his sons Philip of Shirford, who died without issue, and John, “2d son and heir to his brother”; and John’s son Nicholas, “eldest son and heir”, with his three wives in order: Alice, a daughter of “Tho. Denton of Basyles Lye”, mother of Edward; Clemence, daughter of a Lydyat of Warwickshire, mother of Simon; and Katharine, daughter of Richard Brafield, mother of Martin and Luke. A visitation pedigree was compiled from the family’s own account, a generation or more after the events. Philip’s death in 1466 and Isabel Brome’s second marriage, to John Denton, are given by James William Hawes in Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914).

The wardship of 1491

The grant of Nicholas’s wardship and marriage to John Denton is cited from the Calendar of the Patent Rolls^W, 1485-1494, p. 346, in the Magna Carta Project’s compiled account of the Denton family. Its wording is not quoted there.

Alice’s father

The Buckinghamshire and the 1619 Leicestershire pedigrees both call Alice a daughter of a Thomas Denton. The Denton pedigree in the Oxford visitations (Harleian Society vol. 5, pp. 228-229) instead places her, as the wife of “Nicholas Purefoy of Shaldeston”, among the children of John Denton of Wightam and Isabel Brome, with a brother Thomas Denton of Caversfield. The Thomas of the Purefoy pedigrees is most likely that brother, written in his father’s place; the 1491 grant to John Denton fits the Oxford pedigree.

His daughter Isabel

The 1619 Leicestershire pedigree (Harleian Society vol. 2, p. 33) places the daughters Isabel and Alice under Alice Denton, with the note “Isabell & Alice ob. sine prole”, that is, both died without children. The Buckinghamshire pedigree instead gives an Isabel, wife of “Thomas Goodwine of Oxf.”, as a daughter of the third wife, Katharine Brafield. This page follows the Leicestershire pedigree.

The sale of Shirford

Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (p. 515) records that in 1545 Walter Smyth bought the manor of Sherford, in Burton Hastings, from a Nicholas Purefoy. Whether the seller was this Nicholas or another man of the name is not settled. A different Nicholas Purefoy, of Drayton in Leicestershire, was living in the same years; his widow, Jane Vincent, had married again before 1547 (Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 565).