♀Ela (surname unknown)

Ela (living in 1295) was an Englishwoman of Warwickshire who married William de Oddingseles, lord of Solihull, and whose four daughters shared the Oddingseles inheritance. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Margaret de Oddingseles (born about 1277).

Marriage and widowhood

Her parents are not known for certain, though later genealogists have given her a descent from William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury. She and William held the manors of Olton and Maxstoke jointly. They had a son, Edmund, and four daughters, Ida, Ela, Alice and Margaret. William died in 1295, and Edmund, his heir, had died by the time the inquest on the lands was taken, so the inheritance passed to the four daughters. As William’s widow, Ela claimed Olton, saying she had been enfeoffed in it jointly with her husband. The date of her death is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Margaret de Oddingseles and her son John de Grey (1300–1359). One comes down through Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844); the other reaches Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825). The two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Widowhood

The inquest after her husband’s death (writ of 12 May 1295; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 3, no. 286) mentions “Ela late the wife of the said William”, with Olton and Maxstoke as held jointly. The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 4, Solihull) says that the manor of Olton is first mentioned in 1295, “when Ela widow of William de Oddingeseles claimed to have been jointly enfeoffed therein”, and suggests that a third of Solihull “may have remained as dower in the hands of Ela”. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6) calls her daughter Margaret a daughter of William de Oddingeseles “by Ela, his wife”, without naming Ela’s family.

Parentage

Two compiled works give her a royal descent, and they disagree. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry calls her “Ela Fitz Walter”, wife of “William de Oddingseles, Knt., of Solihull”, and makes her a daughter of Walter Fitz Robert of Little Dunmow in Essex and his wife Ida Longespée, daughter of William Longespée, Earl of Salisbury^W, the illegitimate son of King Henry II. The first edition of the Complete Peerage (vol. 2, Clinton) instead makes her a daughter of the earl himself: “Ela, da. of William (Longespee), Earl of Salisbury”. Neither descent is followed here.

Not her second marriage

The county history’s note that “Ela and her second husband Eustace le Poer presented to the church of Solihull” belongs to her daughter Ela, whose first husband, Piers de Bermingham, was dead by December 1296; it is not about this Ela.