Family and Education

Offices Held

Bailiff, Huntingdon Mich. 1400-1.2

Biography

Denton is first mentioned in 1394, when he attended the elections held in Huntingdon for the Parliament which met early in the following year, standing surety for the attendance of John Cutler in the Commons. He performed a similar service for John Rous I* on his admission to the freedom of the borough five years later. Denton subsequently helped to return Members to a number of Parliaments summoned between 1411 and 1426, at the end of which period he disappears from the records. But for many years he was actively involved in the local property market. In May 1405, for example, he was a trustee of land in Huntingdon previously occupied by William Luton*; and a while later he appears as a party to the conveyance of various holdings there and in Great Stukeley. He and his parliamentary colleague, Robert Peck II, shared a tenement in the parish of St. Benedict, Huntingdon, which they leased at an annual rent of 8s. from the prioress of Hinchingbrooke until, in November 1412, she agreed to a substantial reduction of 5s. p.a. Denton’s circle of friends also included Nicholas Styuecle*, on whose behalf he pledged guarantees of £100 marks in Chancery, in October 1408, having prudently obtained a recognizance in the larger sum of £100 from Styuecle just in case he should renege on his undertaking not to harm any of the King’s foresters or other ministers. The two men sat together in the Parliament of 1416 (Mar.), so it looks very much as if they remained friends.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: E.M. Wade

Notes

• 1. W. Prynne, Brevia Parliamentaria Rediviva, iv. 1008.
• 2. Add. Ch. 33521.
• 3. Add. Chs. 33524-5, 33533; Huntingdon Recs. ed. Griffith, 54; Hunts. Feet of Fines (Cambridge Antiq. Soc. xxxvii), 99; CCR, 1405-9, pp. 464, 480.