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"...If that is literally true, we need to find a later birthdate for him that the 1652-63 that is usually assigned him..."
Usually assigned by who? According to what logic and citing which record(s)? If the answer to the latter question is "its not clear" or something of that nature, then I can't see why those dates would be given any notice. Barring some lost record surfacing, we have only a broad idea of when William was born. For that matter, I know I've seen 1665+ any number of times. Owen gave 1665-75 I believe. None of those numbers are drawn from any record though, they're all utter speculation.
"...The will also indicates that son Joseph is not yet 16 (b. ca. 1686ish) and that Dorothy might even remarry! quite extraordinary for a woman with a son in his forties or fifties!..."
The date of Joseph's birth (whenever it was exactly) does put a limit on exactly how old William can be if they share the same mother. However, What if William was b. 1666-ish? This would make him 34 at the writing of his father's will in 1700. If his mother was, say, 20 when she had him then she would be 54 in 1700. She would have been 40 in 1686, the date we are using for Joseph's birth. It doesn't seem to me that there's anything terribly improbable about all of this. The dates of his birth or his mother's age at his birth could be shifted a few years, my point is that the only way things start to look dodgy is if we assume William to have been born before 1660, or his mother to have been somewhat older than usual at the birth of her eldest child. Why would we assume either of those things? The earlier you hypothesize William's birth date to be, the more it seems to me that you need to explain the ages of his wife and children. Did most men in this period wait until their 40s or 50s to have their first child?
"...I also find it noteworthy that there were so few (none?) in second and third generation named Dorothy. If she was the mother, she was certainly not honored with namesakes..."
That's definitely true. It would give me more pause if there were some other female name being thrown about with any great frequency, but I don't see that there is. William (1702) had (that we know of) only sons though, and naming daughters after the father's mother was not as common as naming sons after the father's father or daughters after the mother's mother. Perhaps that's the explanation for the lack of a namesake among Dorothy's granddaughters.
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