♀Eleanor FitzPiers

Eleanor FitzPiers was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Joan Martin (died 1322).

Marriage and family

She is said to have been the first wife of William Martin^W, Lord Martin (died 1324), lord of Cemais^W in Pembrokeshire, and the mother of his daughters Eleanor and Joan, and most likely of his son William. She was the daughter of Sir Reynold FitzPiers, of Blaen Llyfni in Brecon, and the widow of John de Mohun of Dunster. Her daughter Eleanor married Philip de Columbers; Joan became the second wife of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln^W, and after the earl’s death married Nicholas de Audley; and William, born about 1294, succeeded his father in 1324 and died in 1326.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Joan Martin, Joan’s daughter Alice de Audley (born 1313), Alice’s daughter Isabel de Meynell (died 1393), Isabel’s son Hugh Shirley (died 1403), his son Ralph Shirley and Ralph’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from her through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his 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 identity

No record names her: William Martin’s own inquest (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 6, no. 563, writ of 8 October 1324) names his son William as his heir but not his wife. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 148, makes Joan a daughter of William Martin “by his 1st wife, Eleanor daughter of Reynold Fitz Peter, Knt.” The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 339, under Audley) calls Joan “the only child that had issue of William Martin [Lord Martin], by Eleanor, widow of John de Mohun, of Dunster, da. of Sir Reynold Fitz Piers”, and (vol. 3, p. 379, under Columbers) makes the elder daughter Eleanor his child “by his 1st wife, Alianore, da. of Reynold fitz Piers, of Blaen Llyfni and Bwlch y Dinas, co. Brecon”. The first edition of The Complete Peerage had called her a daughter of William de Mohun, a reading the second edition corrected.

Her son William

None of these works names the mother of William Martin the younger. He was born about 1294 (aged 30 in October 1324), between his sisters Eleanor, who was “aged 40 and more” in 1326, and Joan, whose son was born in 1314, so he was most likely Eleanor FitzPiers’s son as well; but a second wife, implied by the word “first”, cannot be ruled out.

Her death

When she died is not recorded.