♀Alice (surname unknown)

Alice was the twenty-fifth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Henry Shirley (died 1220). She married Sewallis Shirley, lord of Ettington in Warwickshire in the late twelfth century, as his second wife.

Sewallis married twice, first Matilda Ridel and then Alice, and had at least four sons: Henry, who succeeded him as lord of Ettington, Ralph, Richard and Fulcher. Alice was probably their mother. She appears by name in one deed: when Sewallis licensed William, son of Serlo de Grendon, to make a hay in Bradley wood, a fenced enclosure for taking deer, William paid Sewallis twenty shillings for the licence and gave half a mark of silver to Alice.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Henry Shirley, Henry’s son Sewallis Shirley (died before 1255) and the Shirleys of Ettington down to 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

The deed that names her

Sewallis’s licence to William son of Serlo de Grendon is printed in Evelyn Philip Shirley’s Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873), App. xiv, from the family’s Great Family Pedigree. It records the payment to “Aliciae uxori meae”, Alice his wife. The deed gives no surname or family for her, and none is known.

Her children

Stemmata Shirleiana (p. 11) says Sewallis was twice married, first to “Matilda Ridell” and secondly to “Alicia”, and had five sons, without saying which wife was their mother; its pedigree chart pairs Sewallis with Alicia. The family tree follows the chart and makes Alice their mother.