Good Morning To You, My Gentle Friends,

Sir Anthony Denny was born on January 16, in either 1500 or 1501, in Howe, Norfolk, England, as the second surviving son of Sir Edmund Denny of Cheshunt, by his second wife, Mary, the daughter and heir of Robert Troubeck of Bridge Trafford, Cheshire.

Sir Anthony Denny married Jane Champernowne in 1525, in Modbury, Devonshire, England.

The couple had eleven children: Honora Denny; Anne Denny; Mary Denny; Arthur Denny; Douglas Denny; Charles Denny; Edmund Denny; Henry Denny; Anthony Denny; Mary Denny; and Edward Denny ( Who became Sir Edward Denny, Knight ).

Sir Anthony Denny was knighted on Sepotember 30, 1544, and was a servant of Sir Francis Bryan by 1531; ( This fact is questionable: ) He became a Groom of the Stole by 1535, and was a Groom of the Chamber by 1536, was keeper at Whitehall Palace in 1536, Westminster Palaace in September, 1537, and other royal properties of Essex and Herts., including Hatfield House and Waltham abbey from 1538 until his death; he was Yeoman of the Robes by 1537p a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber by 1538, Chief Gentleman by 1544; Collector of tonnage and poundage in London from 1541 until his death; In 1546, he was Groom of the Stool; Privy Councillor from 1547 until his death; j.p., in Essex, Herts from 1547 until his death; and was High Steward at Westminster by 1548.

By his will of 1519, Sir Edmund Denny had left his second son, Anthony, one hundred and sixty pounds to purchase land and the income from property in Kent for his "exhibition and finding", presumably at Cambridge. A contemporary of leland at St. Paul's school, Denny later studied at St. Paul's and at St. John's Cambridge but apparently did not graduate. According to Leland he accompanied Francis Bryan on visits to the Continent, and there acquired a knowledge of languages. It may have been as a servant of Francis Bryan that in October, 1532, he attended the meeting between Henry VIII and Francois I at Calais. By August, 1535, he was in the royal service, and his first return to Parliament probably followed hard on his establishment at Court. A letter from the King to the town of Ipswich recommending his electioj in place of Thomas Alvard, who had perhaps been Denny's subordinate at Whitehall, can almost certainly be dated December 1535 ( the month being given, but not the year ), and if acted upon would have brought Denny into the Commons for the last session of the Parliament of 1529 and probably also for that of 1536 in accordance with the King's general request for the re-election of the previous Members.

Sir Antony Denny was a Member of the King's Privy Chamber; in 1536, hertford Priory was dissolved and teh property was passed on to Anthony Denny; in 1538, he was one of the two Chief Gentlemen of the Chamber; in 1543, he intervened to protect Thomas Cranmer from heresy charges and sent his nephew, John Denny, to study in Venice under the care of Edmund Harvel. Anthony Denny was knighted in 1544 by Henry VIII; he controlled access to Henry in his final years; he allied himself with Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford; in August, 1546, he was given control of the "dry stamp", which allowed him to act independently of the King; he barred Stephen Gardiner and other conservatives from royal presence; he used the "dry stamp" to sign the Royal Will after Henry's death; he was a patron of new learning and Protestant reform at Court.

Between 1535 and 1545, Sir Anthony Denny became the most intimate of Henry VIII's few friends. As Keeper of Westminster Palace and of the Royal Household there, he acted as Receiver and Paymaster of the King's personal spending money, much of which was kept in the Jewel House in the Palace. His own income from offices has been estimated at some two hundred pounds, but royal grants of land were the chief source of his wealth; in his Will, he acknowledged that "by the princely liberality" of Henry VIII he had gained "all that I leave or can leave to my posterity". The most important of these grants were, in 1536, houses in Westminster known as Paradise, Purgatory, and Hall, and Cheshunt priory with its lands in four counties; in 1538, Hertford priory; in 1540, Amwell manor, Hertfordshire and Waltham rectory, Essex; in 1542, Mettingham college, Suffolk, with six East Anglican manors; and in 1547, in the distribution of crown lands after Henry VIII's death, the freehold reversions to most of Waltham abbey's estates, with over two thousand acres of land elsewhere. An exchange of lands with the King was confirmed by an Act ( 35 Hen. VIII, No. 23 ), in Essex and Hertfordshire rom private individuals. At his death he owned about twenty thousand acres in Essex and Hertfordshire along, his annual income from land being probably as much as seven hundred fifty pounds. With the possibility of raising considerable sums from his Londoncustoms office, and from a license granted to him in December of 1546 to export wheat, beer and leather, he was undoubtedly a wealthy man.


TO BE CONTINUED . . .