William Cavendish, MP, of Grimston

CAVENDISH, William I (c.1530-72), of Grimston and Trimley St. Martin, Suff.

family

b. c.1530, 1st s. of Sir Richard Gernon alias Cavendish, and bro. of Richard Cavendish. m. Mary, da. of Thomas, 1st Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suff., 3 or 4s. inc. Thomas Cavendish 4da. suc. fa. 1554.1

Cavendish died in his early forties, without having played a prominent part in county administration, though he was a justice of the peace for over 10 years. Information about his character and private life is scanty, but it is clear he was sufficiently in sympathy with the puritan cause to join his brother-in-law Sir Robert Wingfield in signing the petition of 1567 on behalf of John Lawrence, a roving preacher. His will, drawn up on 15 Apr. 1572, the day before his death, left all movable property to his wife. His mother was to receive £110 a year from the manor of Grimston and other Suffolk lands, together with a weekly supply of ‘four couple of duck and mallard and four couple of conies’ towards her housekeeping.

There were legacies of 500 marks to the eldest daughter Mary, and 400 marks to each of her three younger sisters. Only one son, Thomas, is mentioned in the will. According to the heralds’ visitations there were two or three older sons, but they presumably died during their father’s lifetime. Thomas, aged about 12, was declared the legal heir.

notes

From TudorPlace Cavendish Family

A substantial landowner, assessed for the 1568 subsidy on £50 in lands, he was related to a number of influential local families. As three generations earlier one of his ancestors had married a Brandon, his father Sir Richard was a coheir of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. William’s marriage brought him into the family circle of the leading Suffolk magnate of the period, and through his maternal grandmother he was connected with the Grimstons. Outside Suffolk Cavendish owned estates, part of the Brandon inheritance, in Lincolnshire and Warwickshire. Soon after his father’s death he began to sell these lands or to exchange them for property in Norfolk and Suffolk; one of the largest sales, in 1561, included the house and site of Stoneley monastery, Warwickshire, with extensive lands formerly belonging to it.

From The Voyage of Robert Dudley, Afterwards Styled Earl of Warwick and ..., Volume 3. By Wyatt ((Capt)), Robert Dudley (Sir)), Abram Kendall. Page ix:

If Dudley's wife was sister to Thomas Cavendish, as Dugdale states, she was a daughter of William Cavendish, of Grimston Hall, Trimley St. Martin, Suffolk. and it is clear from the Cavendish pedigree and the extracts from the Trimley parish register in Davy's "Suffolk Collections"3 that she was either Anne, baptized October 30th, 1562, or Elizabeth, baptized July 28th, 1567, the younger even of whom was seven years older than Dudley. On the other hand, in a deposition made in 1604 one Thomas Denny4 mentions incidentally that he was Dudley's brother-in-law. According to Davy, this Thomas Denny, who was of Bawdsey or Mendlesham, married Beatrice, daughter of Richard Cavendish the author, of Hornsey, a younger brother of William. Dudley's wife therefore seems to have been, not a sister, but a first cousin of the circumnavigator. In this case, however, she brought him into a closer connection with Richard Hakluyt, whose first wife was Douglas Cavendish, another daughter of Richard.1

• 1 Dugdale, Baronage, ii, p. 225. See also a letter of Lotti, the Florentine Agent, in 1607 (Leader, p. 172).
• 2 Calendar of Hatfield MSS., pt. iv, 1892, p. 153.
• 3 Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 19,122, f. 350, 19,087, f. 131. Thomas Cavendish, the year of whose birth is left uncertain in the Diet. Nat. Biogr., was baptised at Trimley, September 19th, 1560.
• 4 Dudley Papers at Longleat, Box vi, f. 46: "because I married the sister of Sir Rob. Dudley his first wife."

From Sir Thomas CAVENDISH "The Navigator"

Cavendish was born in 1560 at Trimley St. Martin near Ipswich, Suffolk, England. His father was William Cavendish; he was a descendant of Roger Cavendish, brother to Sir John Cavendish from whom the Dukes of Devonshire and the Dukes of Newcastle derive their family name of Cavendish. Thomas Cavendish was related by marriage to Cecils, Frobisher, Brandon, Seckford, Tollemache, Wingfield and Wentworth families, "a charmed circle of famous navigators". Thomas' own sister, Douglas Cavendish, married the writer on matters of maritime activity and colonisation, Richard Hakluyt (b. 1552 - d. 1616). (SIC: cousin, not sister)

When Cavendish was 12 he inherited a fortune from his deceased father William, Thomas and his mother went to live with Lord Wentworth at Nettleshead, Suffolk. But after leaving school at age 17, for the next 8 years or so he spent most of it on luxurious living. At the age of 15 he attended Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University for two years, but did not take a degree. In 1580, he went to the court of Queen Elizabeth I, where his sister Anne became one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting. Through his family he had easy access to important figures at court; he became a friend of Sir George Carey, son of Lord Hunsdon, of Lord Chamberlain, and of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, who became the most active aristocratic privateer in the country. He was a member of the Parliament for Shaftesbury, Dorset, in 1584. He sailed with Sir Richard Grenville to Virginia in 1585 gaining much valuable experience but losing money on his investments. He was a Member of Parliament for Wilton, 1586.

Privateer, mariner and Member of Parliament, Thomas Cavendish, was the second Englishman to circumnavigate the globe. His sister Anne (a maid of honour) married a mariner, the illegitimate Sir Robert Dudley, son of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and lover Douglas Howard. (this was his cousin Margaret)

• 1. The Wentworth Genealogy: English and American, Volume 1 By John Wentworth. Page 41. 11. Mary, who married, after 1544, William Cavendish, Esq., eldest son of Sir Richard Cavendish, Kt. He died in 1572
• The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, by George Edward Cokayne, Vol. XII/2, p. 497-499.
• Plantagenet Ancestry, Douglas Richardson, 2004 Page: 381
• Dictionary of National Biography page 264-265. "Wentworth, Thomas."
• The Voyage of Robert Dudley, Afterwards Styled Earl of Warwick and ..., Volume 3.  By Wyatt ((Capt)), Robert Dudley (Sir)), Abram Kendall.  Page ix.
• TudorPlace: Wentworth (note: there are errors)
• COUGHLAN Family Connections last updated Feb 2015
• The visitations of Suffolk made by Hervey ... 1561, Cooke ... 1577, and Raven ... 1612, with notes and an appendix, ed. by W.C. Metcalfe (Google eBook) William Hervey, Robert Cook 1882. Page 12-13. "Candyshe, of Grimston."