Maurice Denys

Sir Maurice Denys (1516–1563) of Siston Court, near Bristol, Gloucestershire, and of St John's Street, Clerkenwell, Middlesex, was an English lawyer and property speculator during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, at which time he served as a "powerful figure at the Court of Augmentations". He served as a Member of Parliament for Malmesbury in Wiltshire and as Treasurer of Calais. He was the builder of Siston Court in Gloucestershire, which survives largely unaltered since his time. His excessive speculation and borrowing caused the ruination of the Siston branch of the Denys family.

Early life

Denys was the second son of Sir William Denys (died 1533) of Dyrham and Siston, both in Gloucestershire, a courtier of King Henry VIII, by his second wife Anne Berkeley, a daughter of Maurice Berkeley, ''de jure'' 3rd Baron Berkeley (1436–1506). His father’s first wife, whom he had married in about 1482 and who was short-lived, was Edith Twynyho, but she died young.
His father was a great-grandson of Sir Gilbert Denys (died 1422) of Waterton, Glamorgan, who had settled in Gloucestershire following his first marriage in 1379 to Margaret Corbet, heiress of Siston and had later married Margaret Russell, heiress of Dyrham, from whom all his children were descended.

Barrister

Denys entered the Inner Temple in London, where he trained as a barrister. He was appointed Marshal (1542–44, 1546), Steward (1545–46) and Bencher (1547).

In 1537, King Henry VIII granted Denys the Receivership of the former Order of Saint John, suppressed in England during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. This considerable preferment may have been due to his eldest brother, Sir Walter Denys, having married Margaret Weston, a daughter of Sir Richard Weston, of Sutton Place, Surrey, the elder brother of Sir William Weston, the last Prior of the Order before its dissolution. Denys took up residence at St John's Gate, Clerkenwell, which had been the Order's headquarters, the chief residence there being the house by the Gate formerly occupied by Thomas Docwra, the last-but-one Prior. This had a great hall, a chapel, gardens and an orchard, and was later the residence of Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex. Denys also resided at St John's Jerusalem, the Order’s former Commandery at Sutton-at-Hone in Kent. He continued as sole Receiver of the Order until 1544, and after that acted jointly with Thomas Poley.Stanley T. Bindoff, 'Denys, Sir Maurice', in ''The House of Commons: 1509-1558'', vol. 2
pp. 31–33, 34-37
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Denys later bought the ancestral Denys manor of Siston from his elder brother, Sir Walter, who had inherited it. This was perhaps in the year 1542, when his brother needed to obtain a Royal licence to sell him Kingston Russell, and one of the brothers went on to build a new country house there, known as Siston Court. The evidence for Sir Maurice being the builder comes from a letter dated 1607 to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury from an agent offering him the property for sale, which is summarised in the Cecil Papers:

:

"Offers for sale the manor of Siston Glos., from Bath & from Bristol, heretofore the land of Sir Morris Dennis, present owner Mr Weeks. There is a new house of stone which cost £3,000 built by Dennis; a park which will keep 1,000 fallow deer & rich mines of coal which yield almost as great revenue as the land".

Siston was built at about the same time as two of Denys’s connections were also building nearby in Gloucestershire: Sir Nicholas Poyntz, the husband of his first cousin Jane Berkeley, at Newark Park near Wotton-Under-Edge, and Sir Richard Berkeley, his nephew at Stoke Park, Stoke Gifford. Denys borrowed heavily to buy not just Siston, but also other nearby estates, including Barton Regis, a former Royal manor in Kingswood Forest, a large part of the Forest itself, and Abson and Pucklechurch from the Earl of Pembroke, who had obtained Pucklechurch at the Dissolution, as well as other manors in Gloucestershire and other counties.

Marriage

On 3 February 1545, Denys married Elizabeth Statham (died 1572), the widow of Nicholas Statham (died 1538), a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers. Her family name is not known. Statham had been admitted to the Mercers' Company in 1512 as an apprentice of Robert Imber. He served as one of the four wardens of the company in 1532, as Second House Warden. In 1535 he is recorded as having shipped, together with his son-in-law Vincent Randall, 349 Kerseys to Sinxen Mart as part of a company of 114 cloth shippers. His will dated 1538 was "sparse" and "suggests a sombre support of the new ways" according to Anne Sutton. He did not, as had previously been common among Roman Catholics, mention the Virgin Mary or his parish. His main bequest was of 500 marks to be lent to "the moost honnest, towarde and thryving yonge men" of the Mercers' Company. The interest therefrom, stipulated at 25 marks per annum, was directed to the use of St Bartholomew's Hospital "where the king's grace will thereto appoint and give licence". This was then a common way of making a religious bequest indirectly, at the politically sensitive time of the Reformation, after the abolition of the chantries. If his main bequest should have been disapproved, he provided that instead one hundred poor people of the City of London should be given black gowns. He left several small bequests. Elizabeth was his residuary legatee and sole executrix. The execution of Statham's bequest, however, seems to have been blocked by Elizabeth's new husband, Denys, and the money was not released until 1550, after Denys himself had been admitted ''gratis'' to the Mercers' Company
At Brook Place, Sutton-at-Hone, Denys had previously built a great house for Statham. The name "Brook Place" may have been its name after Statham's time, in recognition of the locally important family of George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham. This house was later renamed "Sutton Place", partially demolished, and covered in white stucco. On his marriage to Elizabeth Statham, Denys gained possession of Brook Place, although following Denys's death it was inherited by Elizabeth's daughter, from her previous marriage, who had married the Mercer Vincent Randall, who became Master of the Mercers' Company in 1574. Elizabeth is known to have been an active supporter of the new Protestant religion, of the unorthodox Evangelical variety. She had entertained at her house on the corner of Milk Street (rented from the Mercers) Hugh Latimer(martyred 1555), Robert Barnes, Thomas Garret and William Jerome, (martyred together in 1540) and other evangelicals, and in 1540 had been indicted under the first enquiry under the Six Articles to abolish "diversity in opinions". Bishop Bonner chaired the commission, which included at least 5 mercers: John Alen, Ralph Warren, Richard and John Gresham and Michael Dormer and Guy Crafford, the lawyer and grandson-in-law of Joan, Lady Bradbury. The worth of Elizabeth was then assessed at over £500. In her will dated 1572 she left several charitable bequests, to be distributed by the Dean of St Paul's, designed to encourage the new religion by funding poor scholars at the universities. She also left a bequest to Christ's Hospital. These bequests were opposed by her son-in-law, Randall, but were upheld by the probate court.

On 8 May 1544, shortly before her marriage to Denys, Elizabeth had acquired lands in Great Sankey

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