Anthony Cope

Sir Anthony Cope (c.1486 – 5 January 1551) of Hanwell, near Banbury, was an English knight, author, principal chamberlain to Queen Catherine Parr, and sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Origins He was a younger son of William Cope (c.1440–1513), Esquire, Cofferer of the Household to King Henry VII, by his second wife Jane (or Joan) Spencer. According to most sources, William Cope had two wives: Agnes Harcourt, identified variously as the widow of Thomas Stonor, and daughter and heir of Sir Robert Harcourt, and as one of the five daughters and coheirs of Sir Robert Harcourt, standard-bearer of Henry VII at Bosworth, and mother of William Cope's eldest son and heir, Stephen Cope, esquire, who was Serjeant of the Poultry to Henry VIII, and married Anne Saunders, daughter and coheir of William Saunders of Oxfordshire, 'from whom the family at Bedhampton in Hampshire descended, that extinguished in daughters'. He married secondly, by 1496, Jane Spencer (d. 12 February 1526), sister of Thomas Spencer of Hodnell, Warwickshire, and daughter of John Spencer (died c.1496) of Hodnell by Anne Empson, sister of Sir Richard Empson. She was heir to her mother, Anne Empson. In 1506 William Cope sold his manors of Wormleighton and Fenny Compton to his wife's cousin, Sir John Spencer (d.1522), son of William Spencer of Snitterfield. At the time of her marriage to William Cope, Jane Spencer was the widow of William Saunders (died c.1493), by whom she had four daughters, Anne, Isabel, Joyce and Alice. Alice Saunders married John Cooke, esquire, of Gidea Hall, and was the mother of Sir Anthony Cooke (d. 11 June 1576) and Beatrix Cooke, who married Richard Ogle, esquire. In her will dated 20 January 1526 Jane (née Spencer) left bequests to Sir Anthony Cooke and his sister Beatrix.