Kimm,
Sorry to disapoint you, but link between John Dingley of Marshfield and Francis Dingley in Charlton is a myth started by a book written by an Edward Nelson Dingley. Francis did have a son called John, but he was baptised in Cropthorne Church on 1st September 1594. There has also been some misrepresentation of John's marriage and his death, the extract below should give you some further information. You will see that the correct identification of his death would have made him a highly unlikely 95 years if he had been the son of Francis Dingley and Elizabeth Bigge. I have also seen a reference to a private conversation in which Edward Dingley admits he has no evidence for the connection he made.
For what it is worth, the only other suggestion for the origins of John of Marshfield that I have come across (although I have not found the reference) is that a John Dingley of Boston, Lincolnshire applied for permission to go abroad at around the correct time period.
Let me know if you need anything else.
Neil
DINGLEY, JOHN – John Dingley may have resided earlier at Lynn (Moore Families, p.227), but he first appears in Plymouth records at Sandwich on 4 December 1638, when he was fined ten shillings for being defective in arms, and was also presented for keeping two hogs unringed (PCR 1:107). On 16 April 1640 he was granted five and one-half acres of meadow lands allotted at Sandwich (PCR 1:149). On 5 June 1644 he was chosen constable of Marshfield (PCR 2:72). Since he was on the 1643 ATBA for both Sandwich and Marshfield, it would seem that he moved from the former to the latter about this time. He also served as grandjuror (PCR 2:84, 116, 3:78, 4:37, 91, 148, 5:91), and as a highway surveyor (PCR 2:102, 4:124), and on grand and trial juries (PCR, passim). He became a freeman on 5 June 1644 (PCR 2:71). On 22 October 1650 Richard Church sold Dingley some land in Marshfield, and Dingley was described as a smith (blacksmith) in the deed (PCR 12:197). On 1 November 1679 John Dingley and his fourteen-year-old servant Arthur Loe appeared in court and Arthur convenanted to live with Dingley and his wife as an apprentice and servant until he became twenty-one (PCR 6:25). Administration of Dingley’s estate, dated 18 March 1689/90, shows that he was survived by son Jacob, and Jacob’s son Joseph; Sarah, the wife of William Ford; and Hannah, the wife of Josiah Keane (PN&Q 5:92).
His wife has been called Sarah _____________. The accounts of John Dingley’s origins as the son of an armigerous family of Cropthorne, Worcestershire, with several fairly recent royal lines, as given by Edward N. Dingley, Ancestors of Edward N. Dingley (1954), are colourful, but unsupported by evidence and not very logical. Some of the reasons for doubting this Dingley ancestry are given by Eugene A. Stratton, “Search for the English Ancestry of John Dingley”, TAG 56:207; however, this article gives an incorrect surname for Dingley’s wife and the author fell into the mistake made by others, such as Savage and Arthur Adams, of thinking that Dingley died some thirty-one years earlier than he actually did. An updated article by Stratton, “Another Look at John Dingley of Marshfield”, will appear in TAG, 61:234. Moore Families, p. 227-32, gives a well-documented narrative of Dingley’s life and some of his early descendants, and shows that he also had two sons named John who died young, and a daughter Mary, who married Capt. Myles Standish’s son Josiah, but died without issue.
From: Plymouth Colony: Its History and People, Eugene Aubrey Stratton.