♀Elizabeth Cheney

Elizabeth Cheney was an English gentlewoman, a daughter of Sir John Cheney of Shurland, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, and the wife of Sir William Sandys of Andover in Hampshire. She was the fourteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son William Sandys (died 1542).

Family and marriage

Even her first name is uncertain: the Complete Peerage calls her Elizabeth, a modern genealogy Margaret, and Wikipedia Edith. That same genealogy places her close to the royal house. Her mother was probably Eleanor Shottesbrook, a great-aunt of King Henry VII. Eleanor’s mother, Edith Stourton, had been married before, to Sir John Beauchamp, and their daughter Margaret Beauchamp was the grandmother of the king, through his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort^W.

As the peerage histories tell it, she married Sir William Sandys, who died in 1497. Their son William^W was his father’s heir and rose to be a Knight of the Garter, Lord Sandys of the Vyne and Chamberlain of the Household to King Henry VIII. When Elizabeth herself died is not known.

The family

The peerage histories give the couple a daughter, Edith Sandys, who married Ralph Nevill, styled Lord Nevill, the only son and heir apparent of the Earl of Westmorland^W. It was his second marriage, and like his first it was made “in the royal presence”. Ralph died before his father, shortly before 12 July 1498, and before 7 December 1499 Edith married Thomas, Lord Darcy^W, as his second wife. She died at Stepney on 22 August 1529 and was buried at the Friars Observants at Greenwich.

Notes

Her name

The Complete Peerage gives her as Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Cheney of Shurland, in its account of her son (first edition, vol. 7, 1896, p. 55) and in its accounts of Lord Darcy (first edition, vol. 3, p. 20; second edition, vol. 4, p. 72). Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (2005, p. 503) names her “Margaret, daughter of John Cheyney, Knt.” Wikipedia’s article on her son calls her Edith Cheyne and makes her her husband’s second wife, which the peerage histories do not say. This page follows the Complete Peerage.

Her mother and the royal kinship

No source names her mother outright. Richardson writes of her daughter that “Edith was near kinswoman of King Henry VII, King of England, she being the granddaughter of his great-aunt, Eleanor Shottesbrook”, and in another entry (p. 714) gives Eleanor, the only daughter of Sir Robert Shottesbrook by Edith Stourton, as the wife of John Cheyne, Knt. Edith’s father was a Sandys, so Eleanor must have been her mother’s mother, which makes Elizabeth Eleanor’s daughter. Richardson lists Edith Stourton’s children by her first husband, Sir John Beauchamp, as John and Margaret; that Margaret Beauchamp was the mother of Lady Margaret Beaufort is well-established history.

Her father

The Complete Peerage (first edition, vol. 2, p. 238) makes Sir John Cheyne of Shurland, who fought for Henry Tudor at Bosworth and was summoned to Parliament as Lord Cheyne, the son and heir of John Cheyne of Shurland by Eleanor Shottesbrook. Lord Cheyne died without issue in 1499. Neither the Complete Peerage nor Richardson names Elizabeth’s father’s father.

Her daughter Edith

Edith’s marriages and death are from the Complete Peerage (first edition, vol. 8, p. 112, under Westmorland, and second edition, vol. 4, p. 72, under Darcy) and Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (p. 503). The second edition calls her “da. of Sir William Sandys, of the Vine, by Elizabeth, da. of Sir John Cheney, of Shurland”. It dates her marriage to Lord Darcy only “before 1520”; Richardson gives “before 7 Dec. 1499”, which this page follows.