Edward Denny Kt MP (abt. 1547 - abt. 1599)

Born about 1547 in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died about 13 Feb 1599 at about age 52 in Waltham Abbey, Essex, England

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Biography

Sir Edward Denny was a member of the aristocracy in England.

Gentleman of the Privy Council.

Granted for his military services, the castle of Tralee and over 6000 acres around it.

Died 1599. Buried in Waltham where the following epitaph was placed upon his tomb:^[1]

'Learn curious reader, ere you pass'

'What once Sir Edward Denny was'

'A courtier in the chamber'

'A soldier in the field'

'Whose tongue could never flatter'

'Whose heart could never yield!'

Early life

Denny was born in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire in 1547, the second surviving son of Sir Anthony Denny who was a Privy Councillor to Henry VIII and one of the Guardians of Edward VI. Orphaned in childhood, he inherited lands in Hertfordshire. After some minor appointments at court, in 1573 Edward Denny went to Ulster on a military expedition led by Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. Denny then took up privateering, capturing a Spanish ship in 1577 and a Flemish one in 1578. The same year saw him join a colonizing expedition led by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Raleigh; however, their ships were forced to turn for home by bad weather.

Ireland

Denny and his cousin Raleigh were then sent to Ireland to help put down the Second Desmond Rebellion. Denny distinguished himself by leading a company at the infamous Siege of Smerwick. In 1581, he commanded another expedition to Ireland and returned with the head of Garret O’Toole, leader of one of the rebel clans. At court that year, he met Lady Margaret Edgcumbe, one of the queen’s maids of honour, and married her aft 1 Jan 1585 7s. 3da.

High Sheriff, Knight and M.P.

Denny first became Member of Parliament for Liskeard in Cornwall for the 1584 to 1585 parliament. He was granted lands at Tralee, confiscated from the Earl of Desmond; he both became High Sheriff of Kerry and was knighted in 1588. His estates in Ireland were a financial failure and in 1591 he returned to England to command a naval expedition to the Azores. It has not been established whether it was this Sir Edward Denny or his nephew and namesake who was elected Knight of the Shire for Westmorland in 1593, however it is certain that in 1597 he was returned to Parliament for the "rotten borough" of Tregony in Cornwall.

In the following year he returned to Ireland where the Nine Years' War was in progress, to find that rebels had ransacked his property . Disgruntled by the lack of rewards for his service to the Crown, Denny allied himself to the wayward Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Late in 1599 or early in 1600, Denny "took a deadly sickness in his country’s service". He died on 12 February 1600 at the age of 52; his tomb and monument are in Waltham Abbey Church in Essex. The monument is beside the high altar and depicts Denny lying on his side in a suit of armour, next to his wife; on a separate frieze below are depicted their ten children kneeling. It carries the above inscription.

Additional Biographical Information can be founnd at: https://www.stortfordhistory.co.uk/guide10/lady-denny/

Research Notes

Sir Edward Denny had seven sons and three daughters: ^[2]

1. Arthur Denny, of Tralee, born 1584, married Elizabeth Forrest; father of Sir Edward Denny, born 1605, who, on the death of his son Sir Edward Denny, Earl of Norwich, in 1637, who had no heirs, became head of the Denny family and from whom the present family is descended.
   
   
2. Francis Denny M.D., who died unmarried, aged 63;
   
   
3. Henry Denny, of Bishop’s Stortford, whose heirs became extinct in the third generation;
   
   
4. Anthony Denny, who died in infancy;
   
   
5. Anthony Denny, of Bishop’s Stortford, died April 1662, aged 71; his male heirs became extinct but was represented in the female line by the Brome family, formerly of Bishop’s Stortford.
   
   
6. Thomas Denny died unmarried;
   
   
7. Rev Charles Denny M.A., Senior Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, died 29 December 1635;
   
   
8. Elizabeth Denny, the eldest daughter, married Christopher Erie of Topsfield, Essex;
   
   
9. Honora Denny died young, buried in Wormley Church, Hertfordshire;
   
   
10. Marie Denny married 1634, Richard Harlakenden of Earls Colne, Essex; High Sheriff of Hertfordshire 1646, died 29 November 1678, having had two daughters.

Sources

1. ↑ Norfolk, Horatio Edward. Gleanings in Graveyards, A Collection of Curious Epitaphs, 3rd edition (John Russell Smith, London, 1866) Page 37.
2. ↑ https://www.stortfordhistory.co.uk/guide10/lady-denny/

• Nicholas Doggett, ‘Denny, Sir Edward (1547–1600)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008
• Wikipedia
• The visitation of the county of Devon in the year 1620 Page 102 Edgecombe
• Vistation of Hertfordhire Page 102: Denny

From Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica Sir Edward Denny married, like his father, a lady of old west of England stock, Margaret daughter of Piers Edgcumbe, Esq. of Mount Edgcumbe, ancestor of the Earls Mount Edgcumbe.

Margaret Edgcumbe had been Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, and soon after her marriage she accompanied her husband to Ireland, where a fierce rebellion raged. She was, with her two young children and a small garrison or the Queen's troops, at Tralee on the west coast of Kerry, when in September, 1588, the ships of the Spanish Armada were driven thither.

Sir Edward Denny was absent in Dublin, and the position of his wife amidst the half-subdued wild Irish, all devoted to Spain and Catholicism, was far more perilous than that of her father in the " Edgcumbe's lofty hall" of Macaulay's fine ballad. She was however equal to the occasion, and the few Spaniards who were able to effect a landing in Dingle and Tralee were made prisoners, and at once hung by her orders at the latter town.

Lady Denny and her husband appear to have remained in Kerry until 1589, and to have then, with their young children, returned to England in the ship of the famous sea rover, George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, which had put into Dingle for water and provision on her perilous voyage homeward from the Azores (v. Hakluyt).

Sir Edward Denny died on the 13th of February, 1599, and was buried in Waltham Abbey, Essex, under a fine altar tomb erected by his widow. In a recess above the tomb is a slab bearing a long and quaint inscription, to the memory of the knight, and, according to old histories of the county, a small stone tablet was formerly attached to the marble pillars of this recess, on which these lines were inscribed —

" Learn curious reader, ere you pass, What once Sir Edward Denny was, A Courtier in the Chamber — a Soldier in the field, Whose tongue could never natter, Whose heart could never yield."

Two marble effigies, a knight and lady, lie on the tomb itself, and on the stone pillow beneath the lady's head are carved these lines from the Book of Job : —

" All the daies of my appointed time will I wait untill my change come."

From this it is evident that the widowed Margaret Lady Denny intended that she should be buried with her husband, but this intention was frustrated, probably by the disturbed state of the country when she died in the midst of the great Civil War of the seventeenth century. The " days of her appointed time on earth " were long and changeful, and she was probably the sole survivor of that brilliant ring of fair women and brave men which encircled the throne of the last of the Tudors.

Of Sir Edward Denny's distinguished kindred, Gilbert had perished at sea in a manner befitting his mother's pious and noble race, Grey and Raleigh on the scaffold, through the malice of Spain and the perfidy of James the First, that king- had passed away to his account, and his son was a prisoner to fall under the axe in less than a twelvemonth; when Margaret Lady Denny, the ex-maid of honour to Elizabeth, died at the age of eighty-eight years, and was buried not with her husband at Waltham, but in the church of Bishop's Stortford, in Hertfordshire.

The brass which marks her resting place, near the altar, is still in good preserva- tion, and bears the following inscription : —

" Here Lyeth interred the truelie honor'd The Ladye Margaret Dennye descended of the ancient familie of Edgcumbe of Mount Edgcumbe in Cornwall, — a Mayd of Honor in Ordinarie to Queen Elizabeth of blessed memorie, then marry'd to Sir Edward Dennye, Kt. Groom of her Majesty's Privy Chamber; She departed this lyfe April 24,1648, Aged 88 yeares, and in the 48th yeare of her widowhood."