♀Ermeline (surname unknown)

Ermeline, whose surname is not known, was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by three separate lines of descent, all through her daughter Emma de Lacy: her twenty-sixth great-grandmother by one line and her twenty-seventh great-grandmother by the other two. She married Walter de Lacy^W, an Anglo-Norman baron who died in 1085.

Ermeline is said to have borne Walter three sons, Roger, Hugh and Walter, and two daughters, Ermeline and Emma. Walter died on 27 March 1085, said to have fallen from a ladder while building St Peter’s church at Hereford. Nothing else is told of her, and no dates for her own birth or death are known.

Lines of descent

All three lines run through her daughter Emma de Lacy and come down on the father’s side of Nancy Jane Blanchard, through her father, Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), both descended from Ermeline, and in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents, Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825), both descended from her too.

Notes

Sources

Ermeline is named only in C. L. Kingsford’s article “Lacy, Walter de (d. 1085)” in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 31 (1892): “By his wife, Ermeline, he left three sons, Roger, Hugh, and Walter, and two daughters, Ermeline and Emma.” The article gives no surname, parentage or dates for her, and no charter or other record of her is cited, so the account is a compiled one.