07/06/2023

GGF15 – Sir Thomas Denton (1401-1427) and Agnes Danvers

Forward to GGF14 – Sir Thomas Denton of Fyfield – Forward to American Denton’s Index
Back to GGF16 John Denton of Fyfield – Back to Denton Family Bible

This Thomas was quite short-lived, dying at just twenty-six years of age but not before he and his wife had created my GGF14, another Thomas.

In 1420 Sir Thomas married Agnes Danvers (b.1398). Her surname is probably a derivative of D’Anvers (of Antwerp). Agnes’s family could lay claim to descent from King Henry II and held lands in Calthorpe, near Banbury, Berkshire.

Agnes Danvers

Agnes rather promptly remarried after Thomas’s death. In 1428 she married Sir Thomas Baldington in Thame Oxfordshire, the place where two of my grandchildren have grown up.

The Baldington family based themselves in Albury some five miles west of Thame, Oxfordshire. In the 15th century the broader area of Old Thame was owned by the crown, the Bishop of Lincoln its tenant. He sublet a portion of the land to the Baldingtons, where they created Baldington Manor. The manor is first recorded in 1419 when William Baldington died and it passed to his son-in-law, the Sir Thomas who married Agnes. Agnes sold it in 1473 together with Place House to Geoffery Dormer.

However, Baldington manor house today is barely noticeable, just a few bumps and lumps in the countryside. Even its late 12th century church was demolished during the 19thcentury and rebuilt and only its original font remains.

In 1436 Agnes married Sir John Fray of Chelmsford in Grafton, Worcestershire. At sixty-nine years old she married again to Sir John Wenlock, Baron Wenlock of Luton. Then at the grand old age of seventy-six she married Sir John Say of Broxbourne. She married five times, every one a knight!

Note on shorthand acronyms being used in the DFB:
GGF1 / GGM1 – means first great-grandfather /mother;
GU11 / GA11 – means eleventh great-uncle / great-aunt;
1C3 – means first cousin three times removed

Forward to GGF14 – Sir Thomas Denton of Fyfield – Forward to American Denton’s Index
Back to GGF16 John Denton of Fyfield – Back to Denton Family Bible

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