♂Edward Fabian

Edward Fabian was an Englishman remembered only through his daughter Joan Fabian, who married into the merchant and gentry families of fifteenth-century London. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joan.

His daughter Joan is said to have married first Robert Horne, an alderman of London, with whom she had a daughter, Anne Horne. As Robert’s widow she married John Fettiplace, a younger son of Sir Thomas Fettiplace of East Shefford in Berkshire, who is said to have been a citizen and draper of London. John died in 1464, leaving their son Richard Fettiplace as his heir.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Joan, her son Richard Fettiplace (died 1510 or 1511), 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

His daughter Joan

Edward is known only from the genealogies of his daughter’s children; his trade, his home and the dates of his birth and death are not recorded. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., p. 264) calls Richard Fettiplace the “son and heir of John Fettiplace, of East Shefford, Berkshire, Citizen and draper of London, member of the household of King Henry VI, by Joan, daughter of Edward Fabian”, and (pp. 421, 513) calls Anne Horne the “daughter of Robert Horne, Alderman of London, by Joan, daughter of Edward Fabian”, as p. 681 does without the alderman’s title. The 1623 Berkshire visitation pedigree (The Four Visitations of Berkshire, Harleian Society, vol. I, p. 91) names John Fettiplace’s wife as “Jana Eduardi Fabian vidua Jo: Horne Aldermani Lond:”, Joan, daughter of Edward Fabian and widow of an alderman of London whose first name it gives as “Jo.” rather than Robert.

Another Edward Fabian

A later Edward Fabian, who married the widow of Henry Poole after 1533, appears in Richardson (p. 190) and in Walter Goodwin Davis’s The Ancestry of Abel Lunt (p. 242). He lived about a century after Joan’s marriages and is a different man.