♀Edith Saint Clair

Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423) was an English heiress who was twelve years old when her father, Thomas St. Clair, died in 1435. She became the first wife of Richard Harcourt of Witham in Berkshire (now Wytham, near Oxford), a knight who served Edward IV^W as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. She was the fifteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526).

Early life and marriage

Edith’s father, Thomas St. Clair, was of Legham and Chalgrove, and her mother is said to have been Margaret Hoo, a daughter of Sir William Hoo. Thomas died in 1435, and when the inquisition^W into his Oxfordshire lands was taken at Thame on 9 November that year, Edith, his daughter and coheir, was twelve years old.

She married Richard Harcourt, who is said to have been a younger son of the Harcourts of Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire. Edward IV is said to have granted Richard and Edith the manor of Shotswell in Warwickshire, in return for “the good services which Richard Harecourt, Esq., had performed unto Richard Duke of York, father to the King, and to himself”. Richard of York^W was the Yorkist claimant to the throne, so the grant places Edith’s husband among the men who had served the house of York.

Children and death

Edith is said to have been the mother of Richard’s son and heir, Christopher, and of a daughter, Anne, who married Henry Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele^W; Alice, who married William Bessiles, was probably her daughter too. Christopher died before his father, and it was his son, Miles Harcourt, who became Richard’s heir in 1486.

Edith died before her husband, who married again; his last wife was Katharine, the widow of Sir Miles Stapleton of Ingham. When Richard made his will on 25 September 1486, he asked prayers “for the soule of Edyth, sometyme my wif”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Alice, 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 age comes from the inquisition taken at Thame on 9 November 1435 after her father’s death, which gives her as aged 12 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 24, 11–15 Henry VI). Her parents are given in Craig’s article “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. 219, which calls her the “daughter of Thomas St. Clair by his wife Margaret Hoo” and makes Margaret a daughter of Sir William Hoo (died 1410) and Alice St. Omer. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 7, under Ingham) calls her “Edith, da. and coh. of Thomas Seint Clere, of Legham and Chalgrove”; the first edition (vol. 7, p. 66, under Saye and Sele) calls her the daughter and heir of Sir Thomas St. Clere. The Shotswell grant and Richard’s will of 1486 are quoted in E. W. Harcourt’s The Harcourt Papers, vol. 1 (1880), pp. 73–75.

Her children

The Complete Peerage and The Harcourt Papers both name her as the mother of Christopher and of Anne. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 263, carries the descent through Alice under Richard and Edith, and Richard’s will names “Alice, my daughter” as the wife of William Bessiles, but no record names Alice’s mother. A son William is also counted here in this marriage; The Harcourt Papers calls William Richard’s only son by Katharine, and Richard settled his lands on Katharine for her life and then on William.

Her name

The name is written Saint Clair, St. Clair, St. Clere, Seint Clere and S. Clare in the sources.