♀Beatrix Shirley

Beatrix Shirley (died 10 July 1483) was an Englishwoman of the fifteenth century who married John Brome, a lawyer of Warwick and lord of the manor of Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, and was the mother of his heir, Nicholas. She was the fifteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Isabel Brome. Through Isabel she was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Marriage

Beatrix was a daughter of Sir Ralph Shirley and probably of his wife Joan Basset, and she bore the name of her grandmother, Beatrice de Braose. She married John Brome. They had at least eight children: three sons, Thomas, Nicholas and John, and five daughters, Isabel, Jane, Elizabeth, Agnes and Jocosa. In June 1467 a deed settled lands in Lapworth, Kingswood and Henley on John and Beatrix for their lives, with remainder to their children.

Widowhood

Beatrix was widowed in 1468, when her husband is said to have been killed in a quarrel at the church of the White Friars in London. Baddesley Clinton passed to their second son, Nicholas. In September 1473 Beatrix and Nicholas together made the settlement for his marriage to Elizabeth Arundell, a widow of a Cornish family. In January 1473/4, by agreement with Nicholas, she took a life estate in the manor of Baddesley Clinton, which was to return to him at her death, and on 10 February 1474/5, after his marriage, she conveyed the manor to him for a rent of £20 a year.

She died a widow on 10 July 1483 and was buried in the chancel of Baddesley Clinton church, under a raised monument that has since disappeared. Its Latin epitaph read, in English, “Here lies Beatrice Brome, a widow, daughter of Ralph Shirley, Knight, formerly wife of John Brome, Esq., of Baddesley Clinton”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Isabel Brome, her daughter Alice Denton, Alice’s son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) 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 parents

The Warwickshire heraldic visitation^W of 1619 (Harleian Society vol. 12, p. 97) gives John Brome of Baddesley’s wife as Beatrix, daughter of Sir Ralph Shirley of Shirley in Leicestershire; James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), p. 77, calls her father Sir Ralph Shirley of Eatington. Her mother’s name comes from a table in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (vol. 150, 1996, p. 324), which shows Hugh Shirley (died 1403) and Beatrice de Braose (died 1440) as the parents of Ralph Shirley, husband of Joan Basset, and Ralph and Joan as the parents of Beatrix, wife of John Brome, and of a son Ralph Shirley, “of Wiston in 1449”. The same table prints “d 1483” beneath John Brome’s name; that is Beatrix’s own year of death, for John was killed in 1468.

Her estate and her epitaph

The deed of 1467, the marriage settlement of 1473 and her dealings over the manor in 1473/4 and 1474/5 are given by Hawes (pp. 78–80), after Henry Norris’s history of Baddesley Clinton. Her epitaph was printed by William Dugdale in his Antiquities of Warwickshire (vol. 2, p. 974) and quoted by Hawes: “Hic jacet Beatrix Brome, vidua, filia Radulfi Shirley, militis, quondam uxor Johannis Brome de Badsley-Clinton armigeri; que obiit X die mensis Julii anno Domini MCCCCLXXXIII, cujus anime propitietur Deus. Amen.”