John Heydon

Family/Spouse: Katherine Willoughby. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Margery Heydon

Notes:

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Henry Heydon, also a common lawyer, was knighted at Henry VII's coronation in 1485 and married Anne (d. 1510), daughter of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn of Blickling, Norfolk. He was survived by three sons, the eldest of whom, John Heydon (1468–1550), inherited the Norfolk and Kent estates, and five daughters, for whom he arranged good marriages.

Many prominent sixteenth-century East Anglian families (such as the Townshends, Pastons, and Jenneys) owed their rise to a successful fifteenth-century lawyer of humble origins, but even by these standards the rapid ascent of the Heydons is remarkable and owed much to the opportunities and tenacity of the first John Heydon. In the pedigree devised by Clarenceux king of arms for Sir Christopher Heydon in 1563, the family tree before the first John Heydon is fictitious: and the arms of Sir Christopher himself were derived from those of the Hertfordshire Heydons, who were unrelated to the Norfolk family.

Henry married Anne Boleyn. Anne (daughter of Geoffrey Boleyn, Lord Mayor of London and Anne Hoo) died about 1510. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

"John Heydon, gentleman, of Baconsthorpe (about 3 miles from Gresham) was a Norwich lawyer who encouraged Lord Moleyns in his attack on Gresham manor. He was J.P. 1441-50 and 1455-60, and M.P. 1445-6, 1459, and 1460-1, but was involved in many illegal and violent incidents. He died in 1479." [Norman Davis, footnote in The Paston Letters, citation details below.]

"Heydon [formerly Baxter], John (d. 1479), lawyer, was the son of William Baxter, a free peasant or yeoman at Heydon in north-east Norfolk in the early fifteenth century. Heydon's humble origins were known to contemporaries and although throughout his career he used the surname Heydon, possibly in order to disguise his origins, legal records as late as 1450 refer to him as John Heydon of Baconsthorpe alias John Baxter of Heydon." [Oxford DNB, citation details below.]

"John Heydon's marriage was troubled. He seems to have believed that the second child born to his wife, Eleanor, was not his; in July 1444 Margaret Paston reported that Heydon 'wille nowt of here, nerre of here chyld', and that he had threatened to cut off her nose 'to makyn here to be know wat sche is' and kill the infant if they came near him. Heydon appears to have remained on good terms with his father-in-law, but his marital problems clearly continued, for in October 1450 he is said to have paled visibly when Chief Justice Markham remarked that he 'levid ungoodly in puttyng awey of his wyff and kept another'. His will, made in March 1478 and proved in 1480, makes no reference to his wife or to any child besides Henry, though it is otherwise a pious and conscientious document." [Oxford DNB, citation details below.]

John married Eleanor Winter. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: of Blickling, Norfolk, England

Notes:

Citizen and mercer of London. Sheriff of London 1446-47. Burgess for London, 1449. Alderman 1452-63; Lord Mayor, 1457-58.

Geoffrey married Anne Hoo before 1445. Anne (daughter of Thomas Hoo and Elizabeth Wychingham) died in 1484; was buried in Norwich Cathedral, Norwich, Norfolk, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Geoffrey married Alice Bracton. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire 1430. Esquire of the Chamber to Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter. Chancellor in France and Normandy. Summoned to Parliament 2 Jan 1449, 5 Sep 1450, and 20 Jan 1453.

Thomas married Elizabeth Wychingham before 1 Jul 1428. Elizabeth (daughter of Nicholas Wychingham) died before 1445. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]