Family and Education

m. by 1381, Lucy.

Offices Held

Tax collector, Dorset Nov. 1388.

Bailiff, Wareham Mich. 1390-1.1

Biography

In the autumn of 1376 Adam Denys was among the many men from Wareham, Corfe and elsewhere in East Purbeck who were alleged to have pillaged the Welfare of Dartmouth after storms had driven her into Kimmeridge Bay. When he and his wife were assessed at Wareham for the poll tax of 1381 his occupation was given as ‘piscator’, and he seems to have been comparatively prosperous: he paid 1s.6d. tax instead of the more usual amount of 1s.Then too he was one of the eight burgesses of Wareham, including the mayor, who, in August 1382, were granted custody of the tolls and customs of the borough which in normal times were payable to the earl of March as its lord. Until the heir to the earldom, Roger Mortimer, came of age they were to pay 11 marks a year to the royal receiver.2 Denys is finally heard of during his last Parliament, when, on 22 Oct. 1399, he and his fellow Member for Wareham, Thomas Barbour, stood surety at the Exchequer for the newly appointed customers of Melcombe Regis.3

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

When giving evidence at Wareham in a suit between the rector of Church Knowle and the abbot of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, in 1384, Denys was said to be aged 38 (Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Soc. lxv. 95).

• 1. SC6/1112/3.
• 2. CPR, 1374-7, p. 409; E179/103/48; CFR, ix. 313. Another participant in this grant was a kinsman, John Denys, who was to serve as bailiff in 1391-2, the term immediately following Adam’s bailiffship: SC6/834/5.
• 3. CFR, xii. 4.