While visiting Evesham for last year’s medieval re-enactment, I happened on the village of Cropthorne, with its large medieval church. I do a fair bit of church-crawling, and this was a fine specimen, built near the sites of a Saxon hunting lodge and containing a 9th century Saxon cross. It also had some interesting 17thc monuments to a family called Dingley or Dineley (earlier records use the latter spelling) who appeared in the local area as landowners since the 1300’s.
The tomb of Francis Dingley/Dineley and his wife Elizabeth Bigge were of particular interest, as on a plaque above the monument it was written that the family claimed descent from Edward I via Joan of Acre and Edward III via John of Gaunt. It seems Francis’s mother was Mary Neville, a descendant of Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort, daughter of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford. However, the plaque on the tomb also mentions another line of descent from Edmund of Langley’s daughter, Constance, but so far I can’t find where exactly she ties in. Does anyone else know more about this Worcestershire family’s origins?
Francis Dingley himself seemed to have had an eventful life, dying in a duel in 1624 when he was about 74 years old. He’d been married for 50 years to Elizabeth and they had 19 children, though not all made it to adulthood.
The other grand monument in the church is that of his grandson, Edward Dingley.
murreyandblue 
Wikitree tells me that the descent is via George Neville, Lord Bergavenny. His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Beauchamp of Abergavenny, and his wife, Isabelle Despenser (her first husband, not the second, Warwick). Isabelle was of course the daughter of Thomas Despenser and Constance of York. This is a relatively rare descent, but descents from Constance (in particular) are like the grains of sand.
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