♀Alice (surname unknown)

Alice (living in 1315) was the wife of Sir Nicholas Malemayns, lord of Ockley in Surrey, named with him in a royal grant of 1296 that made the two of them joint holders of his manors. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through Petronilla Malmains (died 1349).

Marriage

In 1296 Nicholas surrendered his manors of Ockley, Newland, Stamshaw, Warnborough, Aldwick, Rainham and Sheppey to the king, who granted them back to Nicholas and his wife Alice together. Her seal and his survive side by side on a document of 1315; hers shows a saltire, a diagonal cross, of a family that has not been identified.

Their children were probably Petronilla Malmains, who married Thomas St. Omer, and Beatrice Malemayns, who married Sir Otes de Grandison. Sir Nicholas died on 12 May 1349, and his manors were divided among Beatrice, Petronilla’s daughters and a third heir. More than a century later, in 1468, the daughters of Thomas, Lord Hoo, who descended from Petronilla, sued for the manor of Ockley as the heirs of “Nicholas Malmayns and Alice”. The claim ran through her as well as her husband most likely because the king’s grant of 1296 had given Ockley to the couple together.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through Petronilla’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 grant and the seals

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. 224, gives the surrender and regrant of 1296 (Calendar of Charter Rolls, vol. 2, p. 464) and the seals of Nicholas and Alice on a manuscript dated 1315 (W. de G. Birch, Catalogue of Seals in the British Museum, vol. 3, p. 223), describing her arms as “a saltire lozengy or engrailed” and leaving them unidentified. The year 1315 is the last in which she is known to have been living; she is not named in the inquisitions taken after her husband’s death in 1349 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 9, no. 418).

Her children

No record names her as the mother of Petronilla or Beatrice. The inquisitions of 1349 call Beatrice “daughter of Nicholas”, and the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, under Hoo) calls Petronilla “da. and coh. of Sir Nicholas Malmayns, of Ockley, Surrey”. The family tree takes Alice as the mother of both because the heirs of 1468 claimed Ockley as heirs of “Nicholas Malmayns and Alice” (Complete Peerage, vol. 6, under Hoo, citing the De Banco Roll, Michaelmas 8 Edward IV, m. 606). The third heir in 1349 was Margaret, the four-year-old daughter of William de Hardeshulle, whose mother Katherine the Complete Peerage (vol. 6, under Hardreshull) calls a daughter and coheir of Sir Nicholas.