♀Beatrice (surname unknown)

Beatrice (died 25 December 1447) was a lady who was married first to Gilbert Talbot, Lord Talbot^W, and then to Thomas Fettiplace of East Shefford in Berkshire. Before 1423 Thomas Fettiplace married Beatrice, the widow of the lord who had made him his steward. She was the fifteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John Fettiplace (died 1464).

Lady Talbot

Beatrice married Gilbert, Lord Talbot, before 1415, and their only child, Ankaret Talbot, was born about 1416. Lord Talbot died on 19 October 1419, and Ankaret, still a small child, inherited his baronies, but she died on 13 December 1421 and the titles passed to her uncle, John Talbot^W, later Earl of Shrewsbury. Beatrice is said to have been born in Portugal, and as a widow she sealed with the Talbot arms joined to five crescents in a saltire, a device borne in Portugal only by the family of Pinto, so she was most likely a Pinto.

Later heralds made her a daughter of King John of Portugal, married three times with an Earl of Arundel as her first husband, mixing her up with Beatrice, Countess of Arundel^W. She was a different woman, and the royal birth is a family legend.

The Fettiplace marriage

Thomas had been Lord Talbot’s steward of Bampton in Oxfordshire since 1413. Thomas and Beatrice had three sons: William Fettiplace, born about 1424, who became his mother’s heir; James Fettiplace; and John, the third son.

Death

Beatrice died on Christmas Day 1447. An inquisition post mortem^W held at Wilton in 1448 found that she had held a third of Swindon as her dower^W, and that William, then 24, was her son and heir. Thomas and Beatrice were buried at East Shefford, in St Thomas’ Church^W, where their tomb bears effigies of the two of them.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son John, John’s son Richard Fettiplace, Richard’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 origins

No record names her parents. The Complete Peerage (1st ed., vol. 7, p. 360) says that Beatrix, wife of Gilbert, Lord Talbot, “was b. in Portugal”, and was probably of the Portuguese family of Pinto, the only house in Portugal bearing the five crescents in saltire shown on her seal. The seal (Cotton MS Julius C.vii, f. 193, of 8 Henry V) is described by J. R. Planché in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (vol. 16, 1860, pp. 145-157). The Victoria County History of Berkshire (vol. 4, pp. 234-238) says: “The lady was of Portuguese birth, and it is probable that she was in some way connected with the royal family of Portugal.” Nicolas and Madden (Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. 1, 1834) showed that she was not Beatrice, Countess of Arundel. The 1623 Berkshire visitation pedigree (The Four Visitations of Berkshire, Harleian Society, vol. I, p. 90) nevertheless calls her “Beatrix filia Johis Regis Portug: ter nupta”, the daughter of King John of Portugal, married three times. Online trees that name her “Beatrix de Pinto” with named parents go beyond any of these sources.

Her children and her death

The Complete Peerage gives Ankaret as Lord Talbot’s only daughter and heir, aged two at his death on 19 October 1419, and her death on 13 December 1421; an escheat of 9 Henry V quoted by Planché calls Ankaret “the issue of Beatrice” and makes her about five when she died. The same work says that Beatrice married Thomas Fettiplace before 1423 and died on Christmas Day 1447, “leaving William Fettiplace her son and heir, then aged 24”, and that she was buried at East Shefford. The inquisition held at Wilton on 22 April 1448 (26 Henry VI), quoted by Planché, found that “William Fettiplace was the son and heir of the said Beatrice, and was then twenty-four years of age”. The Victoria County History gives her death as 25 December 1447 and names Thomas’s three sons as William, James and John.