♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes (living in 1249) was an Englishwoman who married William de Montague, an English landholder with manors in Sussex, among them Jevington and Brambletye. Widowed about 1238 with a young daughter, Isabel, she later bought the wardship of Isabel’s lands, and with it the right to arrange Isabel’s marriage, from the king’s yeoman who held it. She was the twenty-second great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Isabel (died 1285).

Widowhood

William died about 1238, leaving two daughters as his heirs: Margaret, already the wife of William de Echingham, and Isabel, still a child. In 1239 Agnes sued Isabel’s guardians, Katherine and Michael, for her dower^W. Katherine was William’s niece, and in 1234 she and Michael fitz Ralph had sued William for eight and three-quarter knights’ fees^W that he held.

In July 1248 the king gave the wardship^W of the land “and of Isabel one of the heirs, of William de Monte Acuto” to Stephen de Salinis, with a share of the church of Jevington. On 25 May 1249, at Winchester, the king confirmed that Stephen had sold the wardship of Isabel’s lands, and the right to arrange her marriage, to her mother, Agnes de Monte Acuto. A wardship was property that could be bought and sold, and its holder chose the ward’s husband; with this purchase that choice passed to Agnes. Isabel was married to Ralph de la Haye before 1252. Agnes is said to have given her demesne lands at Hartfield and Cowden to Michelham Priory^W.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Isabel, Isabel’s daughter Joan de Aldham, Joan’s son John Saint Clair (1301–1335) and the Saint Clairs down to Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), and from Edith through five generations of daughters to Susanna Thorne, the mother of Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. From Thomas Dudley’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683), one line 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

Sources for her life

The wardship grants are in the Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry III, vol. 4 (1247–1258), p. 21 (32 Henry III, July 1248) and p. 41 (33 Henry III, 25 May 1249): “Confirmation of a sale by Stephen de Salinis, king’s yeoman, to Agnes de Monte Acuto of the wardship of the lands of Isabel, one of the heirs of William de Monte Acuto and of the marriage of the said Isabel.” The 1234 suit, William’s death, her dower suits of 1239 against Katherine and Michael “as guardians of Isabel, the young daughter of William”, Isabel’s first marriage and the gift to Michelham come from L. F. Salzmann, ‘Some Sussex Domesday Tenants: 1. Alvred Pincerna and his descendants’, Sussex Archaeological Collections vol. 57 (1915), pp. 173–176, which cites the Curia Regis rolls for the suits.

Her daughters

The 1249 confirmation does not call Agnes Isabel’s mother; Salzmann does, writing that Stephen sold the wardship “next year to her mother Agnes de Montague”. Neither source says whether Margaret, already married when William died, was also her daughter.

Her name

Her own family name is not known. “De Monte Acuto”, the form in the 1249 record, is her husband’s name in Latin.