♂Walter Dennis

Walter Dennis (died 1 September 1505) was an English knight of Olveston, in Gloucestershire, who served his county as escheator and twice as sheriff, and who married four times. He was the sixteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son William Dennis (about 1470–1533).

Family and career

Walter was the son and heir of Maurice Dennis of Olveston, sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1461–63, by his first wife, a daughter of Sir Edward Stradling of St Donat’s, in Glamorgan, whose name is given as Joan or Katherine. Through her he is said to have been a great-grandson of Cardinal Henry Beaufort^W, whose illegitimate daughter Joan had married Sir Edward.

Office in the county ran in the family, and Walter took his turn: he was escheator^W of Gloucestershire in 1457, and sheriff in 1479–80 and again in 1493–94. His lands lay at Olveston, Aust, Dyrham and Siston in Gloucestershire, and at Kingston Russell in Dorset.

Marriages and death

Walter’s first wife was a daughter of the Fiennes family, Lords Dacre of the South; they had no children. Walter and Agnes were married before 1467. Agnes Danvers was the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Robert Danvers of Ipwell, in Oxfordshire, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas^W. In 1469 Walter and Agnes made a conveyance to Thomas Unton of a tenement and garden in More Street, in the London parish of St Giles Cripplegate. The couple had three sons, William, Richard and John, and three daughters, Anne, Jane and Katherine.

Walter married twice more. His third wife, Agnes Mynne, was a widow, and before 10 November 1503 he married Alice Walwyn, the widow of Thomas Baynham and the daughter and heiress of William Walwyn of Bickerton, in Herefordshire. Neither marriage had children. Sir Walter died on 1 September 1505 and was buried at Olveston. His son William, then about thirty-five, was his heir.

Notes

Sources

Walter’s parents, offices, lands, marriages, children and death are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, pp. 636–637. Richardson cites, among other sources, the Dennis pedigree in the heralds’ visitations^W of Gloucestershire (1623, 1569 and 1582–83, printed together in 1885), pp. 49–52, which lists Sir Walter’s four wives in order and names the second as Agnes, daughter and co-heir of Sir Robert Danvers (written “Davers”); and a conveyance of 1469 between Walter Denys, Esquire, and Thomas Unton, among the deeds of the Salters’ Company of London.

His parents and the Beaufort descent

Richardson makes Walter the son and heir of Maurice Dennis by his first marriage, and of that marriage writes: “They had two sons, Walter, Knt., and John.” He calls Maurice’s first wife Joan (or Katherine) Stradling, noting a paper of 1901 that identifies Katherine, daughter of Sir Edward Stradling, as Maurice’s first wife. He gives Joan Beaufort as the daughter of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, “allegedly” by a mistress, Alice Arundel.

The fourth wife

The Dennis pedigree, as Richardson quotes it, calls the fourth wife “Alice d. of .... Baynham”. Richardson himself makes her the widow of Thomas Baynham and the daughter and heiress of William Walwyn.

Place names

Richardson spells Dyrham as Dirham.