♀Alice (surname unknown)

Alice (living in 1323) was an English widow who, after the death of her husband, Sir Thomas St. Omer, lord of Britford, near Salisbury in Wiltshire, and Bramshaw, held the family’s lands at Bramshaw for life. In June 1318 her son William granted back to her all the lands at Bramshaw that she and his father had held, naming her “his very dear mother”, for a token rent of a clove of gillyflower at Christmas. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son William St. Omer (died before 1353).

Life

By 1310 Thomas had married Alice, whose family is not known, and together they added to their lands at Bramshaw. On 13 October 1310 they paid John le Proute 60 marks for his tenement there, and they bought more from John de Grimstede for 20 marks and a clove of gillyflower each Christmas. Thomas died between June 1316 and May 1318. On 5 May 1318, as his widow, Alice released all her claims at Bramshaw to their son William, and four weeks later he gave the houses, fields, meadows, woods and rents there back to her for her lifetime. Thomas and Alice had two sons, William, his heir, and James.

As a widow Alice went on acquiring land at Bramshaw: a messuage and croft from Walter Boukke of Britford in 1321, and a small rent from Edith, daughter of Richard de Greneford, granted to her at Romsey in December 1322. On 24 November 1323 she gave her son James a messuage and croft there, enclosed by a hedge, together with rents of 3 shillings a year. That grant is the last record of her.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son William, William’s son Thomas St. Omer (died 1364), Thomas’s daughter Alice St. Omer (born 1340), Alice’s daughter Margaret Hoo, Margaret’s daughter Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), Edith’s daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526), Alice Harcourt’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

The Bramshaw deeds

All her records are deeds calendared in J. L. Kirby, ed., The Hungerford Cartulary, Part Two (Wiltshire Record Society 60, 2007): the grants of 1310 and 1316 to “Thomas de Sancto Omero, knight, and Alice his wife” (nos. 1080, 1082 and 1084, with an undated grant from Amabel, daughter of William le Botiler, no. 1075); a grant of a rent to Alice alone on 12 March 1317 (no. 1085); her quitclaim of 5 May 1318 as “widow of Thomas de Sancto Omero” to “William de Sancto Omero, her son” (no. 1088); William’s charter of 2 June 1318 as “son and heir of Thomas de Sancto Omero” to “Alice de Sancto Omero, his very dear mother” (no. 1087); the grants to her as a widow of 1321 and 1322 (nos. 1093 and 1086); and her charter of 24 November 1323 to “James de Sancto Omero, her son” (no. 1089).

Her place in the family

The Victoria County History of Hampshire, vol. 4, p. 624, says that Thomas “left by his second wife Alice a son William”, and 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, follows it; William’s charter of 1318 settles the point. Some online trees instead make Thomas’s first wife, Margaret de Tony, the mother of William.