♀Alice de Audley

Alice de Audley (born between 1313 and 1317) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of Nicholas de Audley, 1st Lord Audley^W, who was widowed young by the heir to the Bassets of Drayton and married secondly Hugh de Meynell, a Derbyshire knight. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Isabel de Meynell (died 1393).

Early life

Alice’s parents, Nicholas de Audley and Joan Martin, married in 1313, and her father died in November 1316, so she was probably born in those three years or soon after his death. She grew up an orphan: her mother was dead by October 1322, when the inquisition post mortem^W into Joan’s lands named Alice’s brother James, aged nine, as her heir.

Marriages

Alice married first Ralph Basset the younger, the son and heir of Ralph Basset of Drayton, in Staffordshire. He died young, before his father. The Ralph Basset who inherited his grandfather’s lands in February 1343, at the age of seven, was most likely their son.

Her mother’s sister Eleanor, the wife of Philip de Columbers, died on 13 December 1342. Eleanor’s lands went to Alice’s brother James, but a holding called Shawes had been settled by a fine on Ralph Basset the younger, Alice and the heirs of their bodies, and so passed to Alice. Alice de Audley married Hugh de Meynell before 16 January 1343, when an inquest held at Newbury, in Berkshire, described her as the widow of Ralph Basset the younger, “whom Hugh Meyngnel, knight, has now married”. Hugh, of Langley Meynell in Kirk Langley, already had a son, Richard, by his first wife, Joan. Hugh and Alice had a daughter, Isabel de Meynell, and most likely a son, Thomas de Meynell.

The Basset lands

Her two marriages met again a generation later. The Complete Peerage records that her son Ralph, by then the last Lord Basset of Drayton, left his estates in 1390 to his nephew Hugh Shirley, the son of her daughter Isabel, although the inquests after his death named other heirs. The Shirleys kept many of those lands for more than four centuries.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Isabel de Meynell, Isabel’s son Hugh Shirley (died 1403), his son Ralph Shirley and Ralph’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from her through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 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

Birth and parents

Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), pp. 148–149 (Audley), has Nicholas de Audley marry Joan Martin, widow of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, shortly before 6 June 1313; Nicholas died on 28 November 1316 and Joan shortly before 27 October 1322, leaving “one son, James … and one daughter, Alice”. Alice’s birth range rests on those dates; no record of her birth survives. The Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem confirms the mother’s side: the inquest on Joan, “late the wife of Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln” (writ 27 October 1322), found “James Daudele, her son, aged 9” her heir, and the inquest of 1326 on Joan’s brother William Martyn named Eleanor, wife of Philip de Columbers, and James, son of Nicholas and Joan, as his heirs.

The Newbury inquest and her husbands

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 397 (Eleanor, late the wife of Philip de Columbers): “James de Audele, nephew of the said Eleanor, aged 26 years, is her next heir”, but Shawes was held by fine in remainder “to Ralph Basset, the younger, and Alesia his wife, and to the heirs of their bodies; so that the said Alesia, who survives, and whom Hugh Meyngnel, knight, has now married, is the next heir”. Richardson, p. 149, gives her husbands as “(1) Ralph Basset, of Drayton, Staffordshire … (2) Hugh de Meynell”, and p. 378 makes her Hugh’s second wife. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 2, p. 3) makes the last Lord Basset the son and heir of Ralph Basset “by Alice, da. of Nicholas Audley”, the elder Ralph dying in his father’s lifetime about 1335, and adds that she married Hugh “before 4 Mar. 1342/3, when both were living”.

Her son Ralph and her son Thomas

The inquest on Ralph Basset of Drayton (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 473) names his heir as “Ralph, son of Ralph son of the aforesaid Ralph Basset of Drayton, aged 7 years on the feast of St. Martin in the Winter”, which places the boy’s birth about November 1335; it does not name his mother. That he was Alice’s son rests on The Complete Peerage and on the Shawes settlement made on the heirs of Ralph’s and Alice’s bodies. Thomas de Meynell was “23 years of age and more” at Hugh’s death in 1363; no record names his mother.

Her death

When Alice died is not recorded. Hugh’s own inquest in 1363 does not mention her, and a later inquest names a widow of his called Hawise, so she most likely died before him.

The Basset bequest

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 2, pp. 3–4) gives the last Lord Basset’s death on 10 May 1390 and finds his heirs at law to have been Thomas, Earl of Stafford, and Alice, wife of William Chaworth, but “it is certain that the last Lord devised all his estates to his nephew (“mon neveu”), Hugh Shirley”, estates many of which “remained in the Shirley family till the death of Earl Ferrers in 1827.”