John Thynne - Marriages and Descendants

Marriages and Descendants

In 1549, Thynne made a rich match in marrying Christian, a daughter of Sir Richard Gresham and a sister of Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange. Their marriage settlement was entered into in January 1549, and they had three sons and six daughters.

Thynne's nine children with Christian Gresham were: John (who married Joan Hayward); Dorothy (who married John Strangeways and was buried 25 September 1592); Anne (who married John Cole); Francis (who married Alice Knocker); Thomas (who married Emily Bembridge); Elizabeth (who married John Chamberlayne); Catherine (who married firstly Walter Long and secondly Hugh Fox); Frances; and Maria.

In about 1566, after the death of his first wife, Thynne married secondly Dorothy, a daughter of Sir William Wroughton, of Broad Hinton, and of his wife Eleanor Lewknor. Together they had five sons: Egremont (married Barbara Calthorpe); Henry (married Elizabeth Chudleigh); Charles; Edward (married Theodosia Manners); and William (married Alice Talbot). Dorothy survived her husband and married secondly Carew Raleigh of Downton House near Salisbury, member of parliament for Downton in 1604, and the brother of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Thynne's eldest son, John, was knighted by King James I on 11 May 1603, four days after James arrived to take up the English crown. The new Sir John Thynne's wife, Joan, was the daughter of Sir Rowland Hayward, twice Lord Mayor of London, and of Joan, daughter and heiress of Sir William Tyllsworth. She brought the Thynne family new estates in Shropshire and elsewhere.

In 1641, Thynne's great-grandson Henry Frederick Thynne (1615–1680) was created a baronet in the Baronetage of England, and in 1682 his son, Sir Thomas Thynne, 2nd Baronet, was created Viscount Weymouth. In 1789, Thomas Thynne, 3rd Viscount Weymouth (1734–1796) became the first of the Marquesses of Bath, a line which continues to the present-day Alexander Thynn, 7th Marquess of Bath (born 1932).