♂William Purefoy

William Purefoy was an English gentleman of the fifteenth century, of the family that held Shirford in Warwickshire and Shalston in Buckinghamshire. Through his son John he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his 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 his 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

His marriage and sons

The marriage and the two sons 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.

Which William

The Buckinghamshire pedigree of “Purefoy, of Shaldestone”, recorded at the heraldic visitation^W of 1566 and printed by the Harleian Society (vol. 58, 1909, p. 199), begins with “William Purefoy of Shirford (9 and 19 Ric. II)”, a man dated by the ninth and nineteenth years of Richard II (1385–86 and 1395–96). Under him it sets Philip of Shirford, marked as without children although his will of 1468 names three sons, and “John Purefoy of Shirford, 2d son and heir to his brother”. Nichols’s longer pedigree has several Williams of Shirford above the husband of Margery Moton: one dated 1396, the husband of Margaret, daughter of Sir William Chetwynd; one dated 1410, the husband of Marian, daughter and heir of Alan Ayot of Shalston; and one who was sheriff of Warwick and Leicester in 1415. The Buckinghamshire pedigree, made from the family’s own account more than a century later, may have run these generations together. This page follows Nichols, though the order of the Williams on his chart is not certain either.