Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

The electoral patron at Midhurst was the 1st Viscount Montagu, who returned Catholics to the first two Elizabethan Parliaments. The Act passed in the first session of the 1563 Parliament made it mandatory for newly-elected MPs to take the oath of supremacy, and it is interesting to see that the parliamentary successor of Montagu’s Catholic steward William Denton, whose death had caused the vacancy, was either the uncle or the father of Dudley Fenner the puritan divine. Little is known about either of these brothers and namesakes. The former was the father of Edward Fenner the judge, the latter was of Amberley, Sussex. John Fenner of Amberley was born 1509, classed as a ‘favourer of godly proceedings’ in 1564, and died 25 Dec. 1566, a few days before the end of the Parliament.2

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: P. W. Hasler

Notes

• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament. Folger V. b. 298.
• 2. Mousley thesis 511-14; Cam. Misc. ix(3), p. 10; C142/145/15.