♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes (died between 1324 and 1333) was an Englishwoman who was twice widowed, first by Henry Huse and then by Peter de Braose of Tetbury, a knight of the Braose family of Bramber in Sussex, and whose daughter Mary became Countess of Norfolk as the wife of Thomas of Brotherton^W, a son of Edward I. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Peter de Braose (died 1377).

Marriages

From her first husband, Henry Huse, Agnes held in dower^W a house and land at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. Peter married Agnes, the widow of Henry Huse, who had died in 1289; she already had a son, Henry Huse, from that marriage. Tetbury was the dower Peter assigned to Agnes at the church door when they married. Peter and Agnes had four children: Thomas, born on 8 September 1301, John, Mary, and most likely a younger son, Peter. Mary married first Ralph de Cobham and then Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk.

Widowhood

Peter died in 1311/12, and their son Thomas, who had turned ten the previous September, was his heir. Agnes’s dower was assigned to her on 18 May 1312, and by 1316 Peter’s lands and his young heir were in the keeping of Henry, Lord Tyeys. About 1318 Agnes acquired a house in Southampton from him. She was living in 1324 and had died by 1333, and the house at Great Missenden went back to her son Henry Huse.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through Agnes’s son Peter de Braose (died 1377) and his daughter Beatrice de Braose (died 1440), then through Beatrice’s son Ralph Shirley and his daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from Beatrix through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Her family

The records give her only as Agnes, wife of Peter and earlier of Henry Huse; her surname and parents are not known. Most of this page follows F. N. Craig, “Whose Son was Peter de Braose?”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (July 1996), pp. 315–324, whose table on p. 322 shows her marriages to Henry Huse and Peter de Braose. Craig writes that she was “living in 1324 and recently dead in 1333”.

Her son Peter

The inquisition taken after her husband’s death names only the heir, Thomas, so the younger Peter’s place in the family rests on an argument. Craig shows that Peter did not inherit Wiston, as older genealogies held when they made him the son of William de Braose and Eleanor de Bavent, and concludes that “it seems safe to assume that Peter I and his wife Agnes were the parents of Peter II”, agreeing with Gerald Paget (1957): “he was probably younger son of Peter and Agnes”. Craig also suggests that if Agnes and her children lived at Great Missenden, Peter would have known the district, which may help explain his later acquisition of Chesham Bois, about four miles away.