Thomas Dennis
Mayor of Oxford 1642/3 and 1657/8
Thomas Dennis (or Dennys) (c.1602–c.1663) was the son of Thomas Dennis, a yeoman of Ingatestone in Essex. He was apprenticed to the mercer William Bowell for ten years from 21 December 1616.
Dennis was admitted free on 17 September 1627, and probably married his wife Elizabeth soon afterwards, when she would only have been about 16. They had four children
- Thomas (described in the register of All Saints Church as having been “christened in the country” on 3 November 1632)
- Elizabeth (baptised at All Saints on 1 March 1634/5)
- Richard (baptised at All Saints on 18 August 1636, buried there 6 November 1643)
- Joan (baptised at All Saints on 1 September 1637).
On 21 December 1633 Dennis took on Thomas Harrison as his apprentice at his business at 127–9 High Street, where he was a tenant of Magdalen College. The University accounts for 1639–40 show several payments to Dennis that indicate the kind of things he sold: “to Mr Dennis for ribbon and sattin for the bookes, 2li. 16s.”; “to Mr Dennis for sattin and plush for their covers, 3li. 2s.”; and “to Mr. Thomas Dennis, mercer, for plush and sattin to bind the bookes in, 4li.”
Dennis was elected on to the Common Council on 19 September 1633, and paid 40s. for the navigation scheme and 3s. 4d. for not being constable. On 21 August 1634 (at the request of the Mayor, Francis Harris) he was given a Bailiff’s place.
On 12 October 1635 Harris was nominated by the Mayor, Martin Wright, to be one of the two money-masters for Dame Margaret Northern’s charity, and on 18 September 1637 he was elected as Junior Bailiff for the coming year. On 17 August 1640 he was elected one of the Mayor’s Assistants.
Dennis’s first wife Elizabeth died at the age of 26 on 12 November 1637 or 1638 and was buried at All Saints Church. Anthony Wood describes a memorial that used to stand in the former church on the site depicting a man with a great purse by his side and his wife, with a white marble fastened to a blue one reading:
Here lyeth the body of Elizabeth Dennis, the late wife of Thomas Dennis [Hutton adds “mercer”], who departed this life the 12 of November, an. dom. 1637 [Dingley says 1638] in the 27 yeare of her age.
The parish register states that Elizabeth was buried on 15 November 1638, suggesting that Dingley was right; but that burial could refer to Dennis’s daughter Elizabeth, who must have died some time before her own baptism in 1635 and the baptism of a second Elizabeth in 1642.
Dennis probably married his next wife, Ursula, a couple of years later, and he had another six children:.
- Edward (baptised at All Saints on 27 January 1640/1)
- Elizabeth (baptised at All Saints on 21 November 1642)
- James (baptised at All Saints on 1 September 1644)
- Mary (baptised at All Saints on 21 December 1645)
- John (baptised at All Saints on 24 August 1648)
- Anne (baptised at All Saints on 6 May 1650).
On 12 October 1640 Dennis’s apprentice mercer, Richard Peirce, was admitted free.
On 19 September 1642, during the brief parliamentary occupation of Oxford, the city rejected John Nixon, Lord Say’s candidate for Mayor, and elected Thomas Dennis instead, because (as Anthony Wood wrote), “they would have a mayor that should not flie out of the towne if occasion served” (Nixon having fled to Abingdon at the coming of the king’s troopers).
Dennis chose Francis Sherwood as his Child. He did not put in an appearance at St Mary’s Church on St Scholastica’s Day, and when the Vice-Chancellor of the University asked for the reason, the council decided not to attend again unless compelled to do so by law because “the originall was superstitious and besides they are often jeared by the Schollars that the mayor weres a halter about his neck on that day”.
On 7 April 1643 Dennis as Mayor and the councillors were called together at the court of King Charles I at Christ Church concerning the stationing of a garrison in Oxford. On Friday 14 July 1643 the King and Queen came to Oxford after the Battle of Edgehill. Anthony Wood (I:103) records:
Mr Dennys, the mayor of the towne, accompanied only with his mace bearer on horse backe, brought his majestie into Christ-church, the mayor in scarlett bearinge the mace uppon his owne shoulder, ridinge with Garter the chiefe of the heraldes &c. but no other of the towne came with him; and of the Universitie there rode none at all.
At the end of his year of office, Dennis was excused riding the franchises because of the “troublous times”.
In 1644 Dennis, along with Humphrey Whistler and Alderman Martin Wright, was imprisoned by Charles I’s government, but they were all released in December and were reimbursed by the Council for the money they were forced to pay out as a result of their imprisonment, as they had suffered for the City.
In 1646 Dennis petitioned to compound, and in 1640 was accused of being “a great opposer of parliamentary proceedings”. In 1650, however, the mayor, George Potter, testified that he had acted under constraint and had since shown “great affection” to Parliament.
On 19 September 1653 Dennis’s eldest son, also called Thomas, was admitted free, and on 30 December 1664 was himself elected on to the Common Council.
On 14 September 1657 Dennis was elected Mayor for the second time. He asked that John Spurr might be the Senior Chamberlain, and chose Thomas Widdowes as his Child. At the end of his year of office, he should have put in an appearance at the council meeting on 30 September 1658 to resign his office formally, but “being afflicted with much lamenesse and thereby disabled to appeare in person”, the Senior Alderman acted as his deputy. Notwithstanding this, he continued as one of the Mayor’s Assistants until 17 September 1660, when he was elected an Alderman. He was sworn on the Exchequer Table on 1 October 1660 and gave the Macebearer a purse and 20s. and paid £10 for the City to one of the late keykeepers.
In August 1661 when King Charles II visited Oxford, Dennis rode out with the Mayor to meet him, wearing a scarlet gown and tippet with footmen and footclothes.
On 30 September 1661 Dennis is listed as Alderman for the North-West ward. On 27 December 1662 he surrendered his place as Alderman and Assistant, and the council ordered that £20 should be paid to him by the City in recognition of his services.
Dennis appears to have died in about 1663 (but is not listed in the All Saints burial register).
By 1665 his former apprentice Thomas Harrison had taken over both his business and home. His widow Ursula was buried at All Saints on 9 January 1678/9.
See also:
- H. Salter, Surveys and Tokens, p. 401, and token numbered 42 with “THOMAS DENNIS AT THE” around an image of the Three Kings on the obverse, and “3 KINGS IN OXON 1652” around the initials T.A.D. on the reverse