Maurice Denys

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.

"Offers for sale the manor of Siston Glos., 6 miles (9.7 km) 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".

[6]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,[7] 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.

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 main bequest was of 500 marks to be lent to "the moost honnest, towarde and thryving yonge men"[10] 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.

In her will dated 1572[16] 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.

[17] On 8 May 1544, shortly before her marriage to Denys, Elizabeth had acquired lands in Great Sankey, Warrington, Cheshire, from Sir Thomas Boteler, who very soon thereafter "made a forcible entry upon and a tortious possession of a messuage and lands in Sankey" on account of which he was sued, before the end of 1544, in the joint names of Elizabeth and Maurice Denys.

Buckler’s licence to alienate, dated at Westminster 25 December 1546, is recorded in the Patent Rolls: "Walter Bucler to Maurice Denys and Elizabeth his wife.

Mansion, etc., of the late College of Wye, Kent, manors of Perycourte and Surrenden, rectory of Promhill, pensions of 33s.

[19] On 22 February 1547, two days after the coronation of King Edward VI, Denys was knighted, and in the same year he became a bencher of the Inner Temple and a Justice of the Peace for Gloucestershire and Kent, as well as being elected to the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for Malmesbury in Wiltshire.

[20] This comprised a chapel and presumably also the graveyard attached to St James's Church, Clerkenwell, then part of the London Charterhouse, known as the "Pardon Churchyard" and used to bury suicides and those executed as felons.

Between May and August he appears to have been back in post as Treasurer of Calais, as he was receiving new instructions, but on 12 September was again committed to the Fleet, in due course to be released again.

[4] On 18 November 1554, under Queen Mary I, who had returned England to the Church of Rome, Denys was ordered by the Privy Council to go to Rochester Castle in Kent to join George Brooke, 9th Baron Cobham of Cobham Hall and Cooling Castle in Kent, in welcoming Cardinal Pole back from his exile, who had recently landed at Dover and progressed via Canterbury Cathedral to Rochester.

Pole was entertained at Cooling by Lord Cobham, and then with his magnificent following of 500 horsemen proceeded to Gravesend on the River Thames and thence by barge to the Palace of Whitehall to meet Queen Mary I and to complete the task of re-establishing the Roman Catholic faith in England.

In August 1556, Denys failed to honour two payments to the Crown, one of 1,000 marks and one of £579, so was forced to pledge his manor of Burton in Gloucestershire, and in February 1557 he sold other estates around Bristol.

[26] Richard appears to have redeemed the mortgage to Sir Rowland Hayward (c.1520-1593), twice Lord Mayor of London, but in his desperation to retain Siston turned to fraud.

This was a very favourable deal, as Cecil noted, for the £1,500 on its own could be converted into a perpetuity producing an income of £100 per annum to repay the debt due to the Crown.

"A Deed whereby Dame Elizabeth Dennys, wife of Sir Mauryce Dennys of St. John's Street, in county Middlesex, knight, acknowledges the receipt from Thomas Carne of Wenny county Glamorgan, Esq., of a cheyne of gold with a button, a jewyll with an unicornes horne, thre dyamondes, and one obligacian of £40 for a ring which must be delyvered the last day of this instant Februarye and if the said Thomas shall pay £30 on 31st May next then a recognisauce dated 21st Dec. 1561 to be void.