♀Elizabeth Delamere

Elizabeth Delamere is said to have been the heiress of the Delamere family of Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and the wife of Sir George Forster. She was the thirteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Humphrey Forster.

As her father’s only heir, Elizabeth carried the Delamere inheritance into the Forster family. Her husband’s father and grandfather were both of Harpsden in Oxfordshire, but George was seated at Aldermaston, the home of her grandfather Sir Thomas Delamere. Her family’s arms lived on in her descendants’ shield: when the heralds recorded the Forster arms at their visitation^W of Berkshire in 1566, the Delamere coat, two silver lions on red, one above the other, collared in blue, was quartered^W with Forster and Popham.

George Forster married Elizabeth Delamere, the daughter and sole heir of John Delamere, who was himself the son and heir of Sir Thomas Delamere of Aldermaston. The couple had seven sons, Humphrey, Thomas, Anthony, Giles, John, Arthur and Charles, and three daughters, Anne, Elizabeth and Dorothy. Humphrey, the eldest, followed his father as Sir Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston; he married Elizabeth Sandys, a daughter of Lord Sandys of the Vyne, and died in 1556.

Notes

The heralds’ pedigree

Everything known of George and Elizabeth comes from the pedigree of the Forsters of Aldermaston in the 1566 heralds’ visitation of Berkshire, as printed by W. C. Metcalfe in 1885 (page 12). It gives her as Elizabeth, “da. and sole heir to John” Delamere, son and heir to Sir Thomas Delamere of Aldermaston, knight, and wife of Sir George Forster of Aldermaston. It names their seven sons in order and their three daughters, and prints the quartered arms. It gives no dates for any of them.

How Aldermaston came to the Forsters

The visitation does not say how George came to hold Aldermaston, or whether it came through his marriage. His father and grandfather are both styled of Harpsden, while George and his heirs are of Aldermaston, the home of Elizabeth’s grandfather Sir Thomas Delamere, and the Delamere arms appear among the Forster quarters.

Her mother

The Hampshire visitations, as printed by the Harleian Society in 1913 (volume 64, page 42), also show Elizabeth as “d. & sole heire” and wife of Sir George Forster of Aldermaston, there spelling her family’s name Delamare, and place her father John Delamare as the husband of a daughter, not named, of Sir Nicholas Dabridgecourt of Stratfieldsaye in Hampshire. That would make her mother a Dabridgecourt; the Berkshire pedigree does not name her mother.