Benjamin Keayne

Bef 1618 -

• Name	Benjamin Keayne
  Birth	Bef 14 May 1618  [1, 2]
  Baptism	14 May 1618	St. Michael Cornhill, London, England   [1, 2]
  Gender	Male
  Person ID	I39710	Ancestry of PNH, TNH, and others
  Last Modified	4 Jan 2024

  
  

  Father	Robert Keayne,   b. Abt 1594   d. 23 Mar 1656, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts (Age ~ 62 years)
  Mother	Anne Mansfield,   b. Between 1596 and 1597   d. 1667, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts (Age ~ 71 years)
  Marriage	18 Jun 1617  [2]
  Notes	Date of license.
  Family ID	F23327	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	Sarah Dudley
  Marriage	Bef 1639  [2]
  Divorce	1647  [2]
  Family ID	F23328	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	4 Jan 2024

  
  

• Notes

  According to Robert Charles Anderson, John C. Brandon, and Paul C. Reed (citation details below), he and Sarah Dudley ultimately divorced "because of Sarah's increasing religious fanaticism". From The Great Migration Begins (citation details below): Some considerable pain entered Gov. Dudley's last years as his daughter Sarah and her husband Benjamin Keayne necessitated one of the colony's earliest divorces. Stephen Winthrop says "My she Cosin Keane is growne a great preacher" in a letter from London 27 March 1646. In a letter dated London 18 March 1646/7, Benjamin Keayne writes to Thomas Dudley: Honored Sir, That you and myself are made sorry by your daughter's enormous and continued crimes, is the greatest cause of grief that ever befell me, and the more because her obstinate continuance in them is now to me by her own letter made as certain...I never gave her the least just cause or occasion to provoke her to them...she has not left me any room or way of reconciliation. And therefore as you desire, I do plainly declare my resolution never again to live with her as a husband. What maintenance yourself expects I know not. This I know (to my cost and danger) she has unwived herself and how she or you can expect a wife's maintenance is to me a wonder... Ezekiel Rogers passed some of the gossip on to John Winthrop in a letter dated Rowley 8 November 1647: ...I thought myself bound to acquaint you that there is not a little discourse raised, and by some, offence taken, at the late divorce granted by the Court. How weighty a business that is, as I need not tell you, so I would humbly desire that some course may be taken so as to clear the court's proceeding, as that rumors might be stopped, and letters of mistake into England prevented... The news from England in the words of Brampton Gurdon Sr. put another light on things, as he wrote from Assington 6 June 1649 to John Winthrop: ...Here goes some speech of a N.E. couple that lately came from thence the husband first, and then the wife followed after with what goods she could get together but we heat all her goods miscarried and she escaped only with her life. The man was Cane's son a cloak seller in Birching Lane, whose mother was Mr. Willson's sister. The woman is returned to N.E. and resolves there to take another husband. I hope your laws will not tolerate such wicked actions.

  
  

• Sources

  [S7098] Robert Charles Anderson, John C. Brandon, and Paul C. Reed, "The Ancestry of the Royally-Descended Mansfields of the Massachusetts Bay." The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 155:3, 2001. [S101] The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England, 1620-1633, Volumes 1-3 and The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes 1-7, by Robert Charles Anderson. Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1996-2011.