♀Alice (surname unknown)

Alice (died 6 August 1340) held the manor of Chiselborough in Somerset jointly with her husband, John Saint Clair, an English landowner with manors in Sussex and Somerset, and was left a widow with a son of three when he died, before 18 February 1335. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John Saint Clair (1332–1387).

Marriage and widowhood

In 1327 John Saint Clair, then about twenty-six, had inherited the lands of his mother’s family, the Aldhams. John married Alice, whose family is not known, and their son, John, was born about 1332. John died before 18 February 1335, when the writ for the inquiry into his lands was issued, at about thirty-four. The jurors found that he and “Alice his wife” had held the manor of Chiselborough in Somerset together, and that “John, son of the said John and Alice, aged three years and more, is their next heir”.

She is said to have married again, to John de Renefeld. Alice died on 6 August 1340. The inquisition post mortem^W into her lands was taken in Somerset in 1343, and the jurors found that she had held Chiselborough “as in dower”, with “John son of the said John and Alice, aged 9 years and more” as her heir.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son John, John’s son Philip Saint Clair (1365–1408), Philip’s son Thomas St. Clair (1401–1435), Thomas’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

Sources for her life

Her marriage and her son come from the inquisitions taken after her husband’s death (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 7, Edward III, no. 686; writ of 18 February 1335). Her death, her dower and her heir come from the inquisition taken in Somerset in 1343 (vol. 8, no. 416), headed “Alice, late the wife of John Sencler”. It names no parent of hers and no land of her own inheritance.

Her son’s age

The 1343 inquisition gives her son as “aged 9 years and more”; by the inquisitions of 1335 he was about eleven.

Her second marriage and her family

F. N. Craig, “Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley: St. Clair and Audley Lines”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 139 (1985), p. 285, names John Renefeld as the man who married Alice, citing a complaint of 12 July 1335 in which James Audley accused Renefeld and others of breaking into his close at Horseheath (Calendar of Patent Rolls, Edward III, vol. 3, p. 200). Craig goes on: “My guess is that the pedigree in the Plea Roll of 7 Henry IV reflects legal considerations rather than those of modern genealogy, and that Alice was the daughter of Margaret Bereford and James Audley”, pointing to the Bereford and Audley manors of Chalgrove and Ashby Magna that later passed to the St. Clairs. He offers this as a guess, and her parents are left blank here. One online family tree calls her “Alice St. Philabert” and give her a birth in 1278, without a source.

Her name

No record of her gives a surname.