Note 100b — Chapter VI · THE FIELD OF THE BATTLE OF TOWTON. [81a]

Sir John Dinham or Denham, was a distinguished military commander, and a decided partisan of the Yorkists; and in the thirty-eighth year of Henry VI., being at Calais, he proceeded suddenly, by the direction of the Earl of Warwick, to Sandwich, and there surprised Lord Rivers, and his son Lord Scales, of the opposite party, and took several King’s ships lying in the harbour, and brought them to Calais. After Edward IV. had obtained the crown, Sir John Denham was so much esteemed by him, that in the sixth year of that King’s reign, he was summoned to Parliament as Baron Denham; he had several grants of valuable offices, and also of considerable possessions, then in the crown, by reason of the death of Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devonshire, without issue, and of the forfeiture of Thomas Courtenay, late Earl of Devonshire. After having been made a Knight of the Garter, he died in the seventeenth year of Henry VII. He is called “John Lord Dynham” in Rot. Parl. 12 and 13 Edward IV. vol. vi. fo. 16.