Family and Education

b. c.1628, 1st s. of Thomas Denne of Canterbury by Susan, da. and coh. of Arthur Honeywood of Lenham. educ. Queens’, Camb. 1645-8; Magdalen Hall, Oxf. BA 1648, MA 1651; G. Inn 1648, called 1655. m. c.1655, Mary, da. and coh. of Thomas Denne^† of Denne Hill, 4da. suc. fa. 1657.1

Offices Held

Student of Christ Church, Oxf. 1648; freeman, Canterbury 1656, commr. for assessment 1657, Jan. 1660, 1679-80, Kent and Canterbury 1689- 90; j.p. Kent 1657-July 1660, 1689-d.; commr. for militia, Canterbury Mar. 1660, sewers Walland marsh, Dec. 1660; surveyor of customs, Deal 1661-?66; bencher, G. Inn 1677; recorder, Canterbury Oct. 1688-d., Dover 1689-d.; steward of chancery court, Cinque Ports 1689-d.2

Serjeant-at-law June 1688-d.

Biography

Denne came of a family long settled in Kent and armigerous since at least the reign of Henry III. One of them represented the county in 1320 and his father-in-law sat for Canterbury in 1624. His own return to the second Protectorate Parliament and his inclusion on the commission of the peace in the following year would indicate no great hostility to the regime. After the Restoration, however, in his petition for the surveyorship of the customs at Deal, he claimed that he had served Charles I by conveying letters to and from the fleet and that he had been obliged to leave the country. He also asserted that his father, ‘who was servant to the last two Kings’ had been imprisoned and lost £600 ‘to their utter ruin’. The customs commissioners recommended that the petition should be granted in view of Denne’s ‘long fidelity and activity’.3

Denne was removed from the commission of the peace after the Restoration, though he did receive the surveyorship at Deal. A practising lawyer, in April 1664 at the quarter sessions at Dover he defended two dissenters and ‘pleaded ... so vehemently that some threatened to throw him over the bar’. Returned for Canterbury, five miles from his home, to the Oxford Parliament, probably as an exclusionist, he left no trace on its records. He did not stand again, though he may have become a Whig collaborator, being raised to the coif in 1688. He died on 8 Oct. 1693 and was buried at Kingston. No later member of the family entered Parliament.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Basil Duke Henning

Notes

• 1. Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. liv), 47; M.I. St. Giles, Kingston.
• 2. Roll of the Freemen ed. Cowper, 115; Kent AO, Q/JC, 19, 20, 21; Cal. Treas. Bks. i. 8, 369; C181/7/73; CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 286; 1689-90, p. 355; J. B. Jones, Annals of Dover, 347; Luttrell, i. 446.
• 3. Hasted, Kent, ix. 345-6; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 153.
• 4. CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 565-6.