page_title: Gilbert Denys
section_title: Marriages to Joan Kemeys and Margaret Russell
hierarchical_section_title: Gilbert Denys / Marriages to Joan Kemeys and Margaret Russell
caption_attribution_description: English: 16th century relief-sculpted stone escutcheon of 9 quarters over main entrance to courtyard of Great Fulford House, Dunsford, Devon. Arms per Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, p.848, pedigree of Fulford of Fulford, and as depicted on the monument to Sir Thomas Fulford (died 1610) and in the 19th century stained glass east window in the Fulford Chapel of Dunsford Church: 1: Gules, a chevron argent (Fulford) 2: Argent, on a bend sable three bear's heads and necks erased of the first (FitzUrse) 3: Argent, a chevron between three cockrels sable (Moreton) 4: Or, on a bend gules three crosses moline argent (Belston) 5: Azure, three bird-bolts palewise points in base argent (Bozom of Bozom's Hele) 6: Argent, a lion rampant gules a chief azure (St George of Dittisham; see also arms of St George Baronets) 7: Gules, three leopard's faces or jessant-de-lys azure over all a bend engrailed azure (Denys of Glamorgan and of Siston, Gloucestershire) 8: Ermine, on a cross gules five bezants (St Aubyn of Combe Raleigh) 9: Gules, two bars between nine martlets argent 3, 3, 3 (Challons (of Legh Challons?))
context_page_description: Sir Gilbert Denys of Siston, Gloucestershire, was a soldier, and later an administrator. He was knighted by January 1385, and was twice knight of the shire for Gloucestershire constituency, in 1390 and 1395 and served as Sheriff of Gloucestershire 1393-4. He founded the family which provided more Sheriffs of Gloucestershire than any other.
context_section_description: Margaret Corbet died in 1398, having produced no male heir, only a daughter, Joan, who married Thomas Gamage and was old enough by 1422 to serve as executrix of her father's will. It is thought by some historians that Denys then married Joan Kemeys, the widow of Jenkin ap Dafydd of Grossmont, and second daughter of Jenkin de Kemeys by Jenet verch Jevan ap Lleison, patriarch of the Began line of the Glamorganshire de Kemeys family. She is possibly the mother of Matilda Denys, who would later marry the younger of the two contemporary men named Thomas Gamage, the son of William Gamage (1381-1419) and Mary de Rodborough, born in 1408, heir to Coity in Glamorgan and possibly the nephew of the Thomas Gamage who married Matilda's elder half-sister Joan [see below].
  There is no doubt as to the identity of Denys's next bride. Before 1408 he married Margaret Russell, elder daughter of his near neighbour Sir Maurice Russell of Dyrham. The marriage was socially advantageous for Denys as the Russells were wealthy and well established in Gloucestershire, yet little prospect existed at the time of the marriage of financial advancement as Maurice Russell then had an 8-year-old heir, Thomas, produced by his young second wife Joan Dauntsey. Yet after Denys's death, Thomas Russell died in 1432, leaving an infant child who also died, leaving the Russell inheritance to Margaret, by then remarried to John Kemeys, and Isabel her sister. Thus Maurice Denys (1410–1466) the son and heir of Denys and Margaret Russell, and his Denys descendants, became heirs to half the Russell lands. According to the Heralds' Visitation of Glos. op.cit., Denys had by Margaret Russell the following children: 
  Maurice, eldest son and heir.
   
  William Denys, second son, who according to the Devon historian Tristram Risdon (d.1640) married Joan St Aubyn (born 1411), widow of Otto Bodrugan (from the prominent Cornish family) and one of the two daughters and co-heiresses of John St Aubyn, of Combe Raleigh in Devon.  William Denys had by her a single daughter and sole heiress to Combe Raleigh, Alice Denys, who married John Bonville, the illegitimate son of the Devonshire magnate William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville(c.1392/3-1461), of Shute, Devon, by his mistress, Elizabeth Kirkby. John Bonville and Alice Denys had six daughters and co-heiresses, one of whom, Joan Bonville, married William III Fulford (1476–1517) of Great Fulford in the parish of Dunsford in Devon. Risdon was well-versed in the history of the separate ancient family of Denys of Devon, which originated at Orleigh, near Bideford, with different arms to Denys of Glmorgan, and is thus unlikely to have been in error in identifying William as the "son of Sir Gilbert Dennis of Wales". This genealogy is confirmed by the surviving 16th century stone-sculpted heraldic escutcheon over the entrance to the courtyard of Great Fulford, still occupied by the Fulford family in 2015, which shows in the 1st quarter the arms of Fulford and in the 7th quarter the jessant-de-lys arms of Denys of Glamorgan, in the 8th quarter the arms of St Aubyn (Argent, on a cross gules five bezants), an heiress of Denys, and in the 9th and last quarter the arms of Chalons (Gules, two bars between nine birds argent 3,3,3) an heiress of St Aubyn. These arms of Denys of Glamorgan are also shown in the Fulford Chapel in Dunsford Church.
  Richard (a priest).
  Margaret (b. about 1413, a nun at Lacock Abbey)
  The Dictionary of Welsh Biography entry by Evan David Jones for the family of Gamage
  mentions a daughter "Matilda Denys" who married Thomas Gamage(b.1408), son and heir of William Gamage(d.1419), Denys's co-besieger of Coity, by Mary, daughter of Sir Thomas Rodborough. Thomas became a ward of the Earl of Worcester in 1421, following his father's death. There is apparently some confusion here with Joan, Denys's daughter and executrix by Margaret Corbet, who would however have been too old to be the wife of this Thomas Gamage(b.1408) as she acted as Denys's executrix in 1422, and would then have been an adult. However a Matilda Denys is mentioned i
caption: 16th century relief-sculpted stone escutcheon of 9 quarters over main entrance to courtyard of Great Fulford House, Devon:[17] *1: Gules, a chevron argent (Fulford) *7: Gules, three leopard's faces or jessant-de-lys azure over all a bend engrailed azure (Denys of Glamorgan and of Siston, Gloucestershire) *8: Ermine, on a cross gules five bezants (St Aubyn of Combe Raleigh) *9: Gules, two bars between nine martlets argent 3, 3, 3 (Chalons of Challonsleigh)
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