Dorothy Kitson

Dorothy Kitson (c. 1531 – 1576/1577), later Dorothy, Lady Pakington, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Kitson, a wealthy London merchant and the builder of Hengrave Hall in Suffolk. Her first husband was Sir Thomas Pakington, by whom she was the mother of Queen Elizabeth I's favourite, Sir John "Lusty" Pakington. After Sir Thomas Pakington's death, she married Thomas Tasburgh. She was one of the few women in Tudor England to nominate burgesses to Parliament and to make her last will while her husband, Thomas Tasburgh, was still living. Her three nieces are referred to in the poems of Edmund Spenser. Family Dorothy Kitson was the daughter of Sir Thomas Kitson by his second wife, Margaret Donnington (d. 12 January 1561), the only child of John Donnington (d. 1544) of Stoke Newington, a member of the Worshipful Company of Salters, and Elizabeth Pye. By her father's first marriage to a wife whose name is unknown she had a half sister, Elizabeth Kitson, who was the first wife of Edmund Croftes (d. 14 February 1558) of West Stow Hall in Little Saxham, Suffolk. By her father's second marriage she had a brother and three sisters: