♂William Thorne

William Thorne (died before 1537) was a landholder at Yardley Hastings in Northamptonshire, England, who in his will asked to be buried in the parish church “before the rood”^W and left his lands in Yardley and Syresham to his son Thomas. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Thorne (died 1588).

Yardley Hastings

William held land at Yardley Hastings, some of it as copyhold, and more at Syresham and elsewhere. In 1531 he is said to have been patron of the living at Yardley Hastings, the holder of the advowson^W, which gave him the right to present the parson of the parish church.

His wife was Alice, written Alys in his will. They had at least three children: Thomas, who inherited most of the land; George, the youngest son; and a daughter whose name, beginning with M, is lost where the page is torn.

Will and death

William is said to have made his will on 8 March 1528/29, though Talcott’s printed abstract dates it 8 March 1537. He asked to be buried “before the rood”, the great crucifix that stood at the entrance to the chancel. He left certain lands to his wife Alys and made her his executrix. To his son Thomas he left “all my other lands, my copyhold in Yardley, and also in Syersham and other places”; George received £10 and the daughter 20 shillings in Talcott’s abstract; Brandon Fradd’s 2005 abstract gives George £10 from each of his mother and brother, with livestock, and the daughter fifteen marks at her marriage. The witnesses were his brother Nicholas Thorne and Thomas Smyth, the parson of Yardley. A compiled genealogy gives his death as before 1537; no record of the death itself is known.

The Syresham land ties the will to the next generation. Some sixty years later, in 1588, Thomas Thorne of Yardley Hastings left his own wife £10 out of the manor of Syresham. Through Thomas, William was the great-grandfather of Thomas Dudley^W, later deputy governor and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W, the son of Thomas’s daughter Susanna.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas Thorne, Thomas’s daughter Susanna Thorne and her son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653). They part below Thomas Dudley’s son Samuel Dudley and meet again in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents, Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825), both descend from William.

Notes

The will

The will is known from an abstract printed by Mary Kingsbury Talcott in “The Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 66 (1912), pp. 342–343, who introduces him as “A William Thorne of Yardley Hastings”. Every detail of the will above comes from that abstract except its date and the sums for George and the daughter, which Fradd’s abstract gives differently. Brandon Fradd, “Ancestry of Thomas Thorne, Grandfather of Thomas Dudley”, The Genealogist 19 (2005), p. 127, dates the will 8 March 1528/29 and notes that no probate is recorded; Talcott dated it 8 March 1537. The patronage of 1531 is credited to John Bridges’s history of Northamptonshire.

Father of Thomas Thorne

The link between William and Thomas Thorne (died 1588) rests on the will’s own words, as Fradd’s printed abstract gives them: William leaves his lands to “my son Thomas Thorne my heir” (The Genealogist 19 (2005), p. 127). Online family trees cite Brandon Fradd, “Ancestry of Thomas Thorne, Grandfather of Thomas Dudley”, The Genealogist 19 (2005), pp. 112–128, for William as Thomas’s father.

Alice’s surname

The will gives only her first name. The surname Stotesbury is Fradd’s inference, not a record: he takes the bequest to the “sister Thorne” in the 1557 will of Thomas Stutysbury of Sulgrave as pointing to Alice (The Genealogist 19 (2005), p. 122). The Stotesbury of Evenley pedigree in the heralds’ visitation of Oxfordshire (Harleian Society vol. 5, p. 206) names no Alice married to a Thorne.

His parents

The same visitation, under Arden of Cottisford (p. 207), records that Alice, daughter of William Arden of Cottisford and Agnes Stotesby of Evenley, “maryed Thomas Dorne al’s Thorne of Northamptonshire”. Online family trees make Thomas and Alice William’s parents, but the pedigree names none of their children, and no record yet joins William to them.

Dates

No record gives his birth. Family trees give a birth in 1485 at Syresham and a death on 8 March 1537, the date of the will. Fradd estimates his birth at about 1487 (The Genealogist 19 (2005), p. 119). Fradd gives the death as before 1537 (The Genealogist 19 (2005), pp. 119–120), and also lists him as owing suit at Syresham on 22 May 1537 (p. 120).