| Notes |
- The Dictionary of Welsh Biography says that this "THOMAS GAMAGE...married Matilda, daughter of Sir Gilbert Dennis." (Article, "Gamage Family, of Coety," by Evan David Jones, 1903-1987.)
The eminent expert on Welsh genealogy P. C. Bartrum (1908-2008) wrote that Thomas Gamage "b.c. 1408" married "Jonet" daughter of "Sir Gilbert Dennis."
The author of the (badly-organized but thoughtful) Wikipedia article about Gilbert Denys (accessed 5 Sep 2020) says that this marriage is implausible on chronological grounds. We'll get to that.
Other sources on Gilbert Denys: His History of Parliament entry. Thomas S. Bush's "The Denys Family and Their Connection with the Manors of Alveston, Siston and Dyrham", in Proceedings of the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club 9:58, 1901, which includes a translation of part of his will. An abstract of Gilbert Denys's 25 Jun 1422 IPM, along with abstracts of three IPMs for Thomas Gamage's father William.
Gilbert Denys of Gloucestershire (~1350-1422) was a soldier and administrator, a major local figure in his time. He was knighted; he was twice sent to Parliament; and he was sheriff of the county in 1393-94. He married at least twice, first to Margaret Corbet (d. 1398) and then, before 1408, to Margaret Russell. He is said by at least one source to have been married to a Joan Kemeys in between the two.
He was certainly acquainted with William Gamage, father of this Thomas Gamage. In 1412, working together, Gilbert Denys and William Gamage raised a private army and laid siege to Coety castle in order to evict the widow of Sir Richard Vernon. The king, Henry IV, sent commissioners to raise the siege and to insist that the disposition of the castle should proceed through due process of law, but Denys and Gamage were too well-entrenched to be dislodged. Eventually they were pried out by forces raised by the sheriffs of Herefordshire and Gloucester, and sent together to Tower of London, where they remained over half a year until released by the new king, Henry V.
Gilbert Denys died in 1422. In his will, quoted by Thomas S. Bush (citation details above), Denys says that he wishes to be buried in the parish church of Syston, near the grave of Margaret Corbet, his first wife. "Moreover, if Margaret, my wife after my decease, shall take the vow of chastity, I bequeath to her all my moveable goods so that she shall pay my debts and nourish my boys. Should she not do this I will that my goods be divided into three equal parts; the first part to celebrate my obsequies, the second part to the said Margaret, and the third part amongst all my boys. To execute this, my will, I appoint Joan, my daughter, wife of Thomas Gamage." As the History of Parliament entry on Gilbert Denys observes, he clearly mistrusted his final wife, Margaret Russell.
Now, notwithstanding the History of Parliament assertion that Denys's first wife Margaret Corbet "died childless," it would seem plausible from the above that the daughter Joan who executed Denys's will was a child of Margaret Corbet, or at any rate not a child of Margaret Russell. If Joan was executing anyone's will in 1422 she cannot have been born later that 1401. Margaret Corbet died in 1398. Denys married Margaret Russell "before 1408" (his heir by her, Maurice Denys, is given in Gilbert's IPM as 14 at his father's death), but probably not as early as 1400, when Margaret Russell would have been only about fourteen. Possibly Joan was a child of the supposed middle wife, Joan Kemeys, but the main evidence for that marriage is the Dennis pedigree in the 1623 Visitation of Gloucestershire, which begins by claiming that a "William Dennis" was the wife of Margaret Corbet, and that his son Gilbert was married first to "Jone d. of....Kemeys" and then to Margaret Russell, which is nonsense. Gilbert Denys's will alone proves that it was he, not "William", who was the (second) husband of Margaret Corbet, and that he was identical with the man who was later married to Margaret Russell. Other contemporary documents make this clear as well. We're unaware that "Joan d. of....Kemeys" exists anywhere except in this pedigree taken 200 years later. (Although it's worth noting that Margaret Russell, following Gilbert Denys's death, really did marry a man named John, wait for it, Kemis -- thus suggesting how this particular confusion might have arisen among descendants decades and centuries later.)
More to the point for this database, the Gilbert Denys article at Wikipedia (accessed 5 Sep 2020) argues that Gilbert Denys's daughter Joan, who is indeed called in his will "wife of Thomas Gamage", cannot have been this Thomas Gamage's wife. The problem being that, according P. C. Bartrum (as shown above), our Thomas Gamage was born about 1408; he would have been fourteen when Gilbert Denys made his will, and unlikely to be the husband of his trusted daughter. The Wikipedia author surmises, reasonably, that the Thomas Gamage mentioned in Gilbert Denys's will, as husband of his daughter Joan, was probably a cousin or an uncle of this one. As the History of Parliament entry on Denys puts it, Joan's husband was "a kinsman of [Denys's] former lieutenant."
But it would appear that Bartrum may have erred, because according to the 30 Oct 1419 inquisition post mortem for William Gamage, father of our Thomas Gamage, William died in 27 Sep 1419 and was succeeded by his son Thomas who was about fifteen years old. This puts our Thomas's birthdate back to about 1404, making him 18 in 1422, and (although on the young side) certainly old enough to be husband to Denys's daughter Joan. And although it was rare in the late Middle Ages for younger men to marry older women, it wasn't unheard of. Most to the point, neither Gilbert Denys nor William Gamage seem to have been the type of men to be excessively concerned with propriety if they perceived advantage to be had.
This leaves open the question of Joan's mother. If she was a daughter of Margaret Corbet, she would have been at least six years older than Thomas Gamage, which pushes credibility. If she was a daughter of Margaret Russell, then Gilbert Denys and Margaret Russell have to have been married no later than about 1400, and there is no evidence that this was the case. Possibly Joan was a daughter of the mysterious Joan Kemeys, but see above for that. Possibly she was simply a natural daughter. Again, a backwoods knight who's willing to raise a private army to settle a property dispute might not hesitate to put his greatest trust into the hands of (a person he views as) his most capable child merely because she's illegitimate.
In summary, given that William Gamage's IPM shows Thomas Gamage to have been four years older than previously thought, and given that P. C. Bartrum believed that this Thomas Gamage's wife was a daughter of Gilbert Denys, we think it more likely than not that, at the very least, Thomas Gamage married a Denys daughter, probably Joan. For now, however, we're leaving the identity of Joan's mother as unknown.
Finally, as to the Dictionary of Welsh Biography's claim that our Thomas Gamage's Denys-daughter wife was named Matilda, it seems worth noting that no daughter Matilda is recorded in Gilbert Denys's will, in any IPM, or in any visitation pedigree. The author of the Gilbert Denys Wikipedia article points out that "a Matilda Denys is mentioned in the Calendar of the Martyrologue of St. Augustine's Abbey, Bristol, as having died in October 1422: 'Domina Matilda Denys, quae obiit die... Octobris, anno Christi 1422'." So it's chronologically possible that this Matilda could have been the wife of our Thomas Gamage.
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Nielsen Hayden genealogy
Abt 1404 - 
d. 27 Sep 1419 