Margaret DYMOKE

Born: ABT 1500, Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire, England

Died: 1545, Tong, Shropshire, England

Buried: St. Bartholomew Churchyard, Tong, Shropshire, England

Father: Robert DYMOKE of Scrivelsby (Sir)

Mother: Anne SPARROW

Married 1: Richard VERNON of Haddon

Children:

1. George "King of the Peak" VERNON (Sir)

2. Elizabeth VERNON

Married 2: William COFFIN (Sir Knight) (See his Biography) AFT 1517

Married 3: Richard MANNERS (Sir Knight)

Margaret Dymoke was the daughter of Sir Robert Dymoke of Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire and Anne Sparrow. Sister of Sir Edward Dymoke.

She married Sir Richard Vernon of Haddon, Derbyshire in about 1507 and was the mother of a son, George, and a daughter, Elizabeth. When she was left a wealthy widow, Cardinal Wolsey advocated a match with his follower Sir William Tyrwhitt, but Shrewsbury, Carew and Sir William Compton combined to secure her for Sir William Coffyn of Porthledge, Devon, and Margaret accepted. Margaret attended Catalina of Aragon at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 and was at court with her second husband, who was master of horse to both Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour.

In 1536 five women were appointed to serve Queen Anne while she was imprisoned in the Tower and to report to Sir William Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, and through him to the King's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, all that the Queen said. These women included Lady Margaret (some accounts give the name as “Mistress Cosyns” but this is a mistake for Coffyn); Queen Anne's aunt, Lady Anne Shelton; Lady Mary Scope, the wife of Sir William Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower; Lady Elizabeth Boleyn, Queen Anne's aunt by marriage; and Elizabeth Stonnor, wife of the King's Serjeant-at-Arms. Sir William Kingston described the five as "honest and good women", but Queen Anne said that it was "a great unkindness in the King to set such about me as I have never loved".

In Jane Seymour’s household, Margaret was a lady of the bedchamber.

Margaret’s husband, William Coffin died from the plague in 1538. The letter his wife wrote on the day of her husband’s death was to Secretary Cromwell gives us an interesting insight into court life.

"Right honorable and my singular good lord,

In my most humblest manner, as a poor widow full of heaviness and without comfort for the departing of my husband, whose soul God pardon, beseeching your lordship to be good lord unto me, and that it may please you to advertise the king’s highness of his departing, and whereon he died, and as the women that laid him forth said, and showed me, it was the great sickness and full of God’s marks over all his body. And I most humbly beseech his grace to be good and gracious lord to me in all my rightful causes; for I know not what case I and my servants stand in, but I remit all to the mercy of God, to whom I beseech God send your lordship long life.

Written at Standon, the 8th Day of December (1538), by your beadwoman,

Margaret Coffin"

Lady Coffin was not left a widow (for the second time) for long after Sir William's death: on 26 Apr 1539 John Husse, a regular correspondent of Lady Lisle, wrote to her that Richard Manners "is to marry my Lady Coffin". Sir Richard sister-in-law Eleanor Paston gave birth her last daughter, Catherine at Belvoir Castle in Jul 1539. Margaret Dymoke, Lady Coffin sent a gift after the child's birth. Richard and Margaret married soon, and during this marriage she lived primarily at Haddon Hall.

On 13 Apr 1544 her father Robert Dymoke died at Halton. He was buried at Halton. Margaret died soon, in 1545, and was buried at  St. Bartholomew Churchyard, Tong, Shropshire, England.

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