♀Alice St. Omer

Alice St. Omer (born 25 March 1340) was an English heiress, the daughter of Thomas St. Omer of Mulbarton in Norfolk, whose share of her father’s lands brought the moated manor house of Mulbarton to her husband, Sir William Hoo. She was the seventeenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Margaret Hoo.

Early life

Alice was born at Britford, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, and a proof of age^W taken for her in 1356 recorded the day: she was “born on the feast of the Annunciation, 14 Edward III”, that is, 25 March 1340. Her mother, Petronilla Malmains, died in 1349. Her father married again, and his second wife, Margaret, bore him another daughter, Elizabeth, at Mulbarton in September 1350.

Marriage and Mulbarton

William married Alice St. Omer, the daughter of Thomas St. Omer of Mulbarton in Norfolk, before 25 May 1366. On that day her father’s lands at Mulbarton were divided between Alice and her half-sister Elizabeth, who was still a minor in the king’s wardship^W, and William and Alice received a third of the manor, including “the whole area and all the houses within the moat”.

In 1367 Sir William named the parish priest of Mulbarton, a right that came with the manor, and he rebuilt the church and its tower, filling the windows with portraits of himself, of Alice and of her family. The Norfolk historian Francis Blomefield^W recorded in 1769 that one of the north windows had until lately shown Alice’s father kneeling in armour, her mother kneeling behind him and Alice behind them both, with Sir William and Alice kneeling opposite.

The children of William and Alice are said to have been Thomas, who succeeded his father; John, who died without children; and Margaret, who married Thomas St. Clair. Alice died before her husband, and both were buried in the chancel of Mulbarton church.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Margaret, Margaret’s daughter Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), Edith’s daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526), Alice’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, Elizabeth’s daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s 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 birth

The proof of age of 1356 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 10, no. 336) gives her birth at Brutford, now Britford, on the feast of the Annunciation in the fourteenth year of Edward III. An earlier inquisition of 1349 (vol. 9, no. 418) made her “seven years at the Purification next”, which would put her birth about three years later; the family tree follows the proof of age.

Her family and the division of Mulbarton

The division of her father’s lands, made at Mulbarton (written Mulkeberton) on 25 May 1366, is in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 12, no. 79, which names “William de Hoo and Alice, his wife, one of the daughters and heirs of the said Thomas, of full age, and Elizabeth the other daughter and heir, a minor in the king’s wardship”. Part of the manor was then held in dower by her father’s widow, Beatrice, by then the wife of Thomas de la Ryvere. Elizabeth’s own proof of age (vol. 12, no. 185) calls her the daughter and heir of “Margaret late the wife of the said Thomas” and gives her birth at Mulbarton in September 1350.

Her mother is named as Petronilla, daughter of Nicholas Malmains, by F. N. Craig, “Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley: Hoo, St. Omer, Malmains, St. Leger, Fitzwarin and Andevill Lines”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 140 (1986), p. 220, and by W. D. Cooper, “Notices of the Family of Hoo”, Sussex Archaeological Collections 8 (1856), p. 108, who calls Petronilla a coheiress of “Nicholas Lord de Malmaynes”. Craig also gives Thomas and Petronilla a daughter Elizabeth who died young, and gives her father’s death as 1365; the family tree has 1364.

Mulbarton church and her children

The rebuilding of the church, the windows, and the burial of William and Alice in the chancel are from Cooper, pp. 108–109, who takes the windows from Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. 3, p. 51. Cooper (p. 108) names her children as Thomas, John, “possibly a William”, and Margaret, and Craig (p. 219) also makes Margaret the daughter of William and Alice. Some online family trees place Margaret and John among the children of William’s second wife, Eleanor Wingfield; Cooper and Craig do not, and the family tree follows them.