♀Ellen la Zouche

Ellen la Zouche was an Englishwoman who held the manor of Bingley in Yorkshire, given to her and the heirs of her body by her widowed mother, and who married John Harcourt. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son William Harcourt (1300–1349).

Bingley

Ellen was the daughter of Millicent de Cantilupe and most likely of Millicent’s husband, Eudes la Zouche. In the records of her own time she is written Alianore, or Alianora, la Zuche. Her mother was a sister of George de Cantilupe, and when he died in 1273 Millicent and her young nephew John de Hastings became his heirs. Bingley was among George’s lands, and it came to Millicent.

In her widowhood Millicent, styling herself Milisenta de Monte Alto, gave the manor of “Byngele” to “Alianore la Zuche my daughter and the heirs of her body lawfully begotten”, with its knight’s fees, mills, market and fishing, for a rent of 40 marks of silver a year to Millicent for life. Kirkby’s Inquest of 1284 found Ellen holding Bingley of her mother, who held it of the king, and a final concord^W of 1284–5 settled the manor on Ellen and the heirs of her body, to return to Millicent if that line failed. When Millicent died in 1299 her heir was her son, William la Zouche, but Bingley was already Ellen’s.

Marriage

John Harcourt married Ellen la Zouche, by one account about 1300. He was the heir of Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire, Bosworth in Leicestershire and Ellenhall in Staffordshire. Ellen was most likely the mother of John’s heir, William, born about 1300, for Bingley, settled on the heirs of her body, passed to him: in 1325–6 John settled it on William and his wife, Joan. Ellen died before her husband, who married again. The pedigree of the Harcourts in the cartulary^W of Ronton Priory in Staffordshire, which appears to have been written in John’s lifetime, names “Alianoram la Souch” as his first wife.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son William Harcourt (1300–1349) and grandson Thomas Harcourt (1341–1417) and, much further down, through Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). From Samuel one line comes down 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

Name and parents

The compiled histories call her Ellen; the records of her lifetime write Alianore, Alianor or Alianora la Zuche, Zouch or Zusche, and the Ronton cartulary “Alianoram la Souch”. Her mother is named in the Bingley charter, where Millicent calls her “my daughter”. Her father rests on compiled accounts: The Harcourt Papers, vol. 1 (1880), pp. 63–64, call her “Ellen, daughter of Eudo la Zouch, and Milicent his wife”, and J. C. Wedgwood’s “Harcourt of Ellenhall” (Collections for a History of Staffordshire, 1914, p. 195) “Ellen, daughter of Eudes la Zouche of Mellesentre”, apparently a garbling of her mother’s name. Eudo la Zuche and Milisanda his wife were a married couple by 1273 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 2, nos. 17 and 138), and the surname la Zouche fits him. J. Horsfall Turner’s Ancient Bingley (1897, p. 67) gives Millicent a first husband, John de Montalt, “who left no issue”, and calls Ellen the “only daughter” of Eudo and Millicent. No record gives Ellen’s date of birth or of death.

The Bingley grant

The inquisition after the death of George de Cantilupe (vol. 2, no. 17; writ of 4 November 1273) names “Milisanda the wife of Eudo la Zuche, of full age, and John, son of Henry and Joan de Hastinges, who is under age” as his next heirs, “the said Milisanda and Joan being sisters of the said George”, and includes an extent of Bingley. Millicent’s undated charter is printed, translated and abridged, in Turner’s Ancient Bingley (pp. 91–92): “I Milisenta de Monte Alto, in my pure and legitimate widowhood, give &c, to Alianore la Zuche my daughter and the heirs of her body lawfully begotten, my manor of Byngele”, paying “40 marks of silver” a year for life; Roger la Zuche is among the witnesses. The same book prints the fine of 13 Edward I (p. 87), “Between Alianor la Zouch comp[lainant] & Milesenta de Montalt deforc[iant] of the Mann[or] of Bingel, the right of Alianor & the heires of her body & for defect &c to return to the foresaid Milisenta & her heires”, and Kirkby’s Inquest of 1284 (p. 97), in which the residue of the manor is held by “praedicta Alianora … de praedicta Milicenta et eadem Milicenta de rege in capite”. Millicent’s own inquisition, as Milicent de Monte Alto (vol. 3, no. 539; writ of 7 January 1299), names “her son William la Zouche” as heir, aged 22.

Her son

The Harcourt Papers (vol. 1, pp. 63–64) say John had by Ellen “an only son, William”, and Wedgwood calls her the “mother of his heir Sir William”; no record of her lifetime names her children. The descent of Bingley supports it: a Chancery inquisition of 1325–6 (The National Archives, C 143/182/7) concerns Bingley and “William son of John de Harcourt and Joan his wife”, and the York inquest of 1369 (vol. 12, no. 360) says the manor was held “by gift of John de Harecourt, lord of Boseworth, to William de Harecourt his son and the said Joan”. The Ronton cartulary (Collections for a History of Staffordshire, vol. 4, 1883, pp. 272–273) says John married Alice, daughter of Sir Peter Corbet of Caus, “post decessum” of Alianora, after her death.