♂Fulcher Shirley

Fulcher Shirley (died before 1166) was a landholder of the twelfth century who held four knight’s fees^W of the Earls Ferrers in Warwickshire and Derbyshire. He was the twenty-sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Sewallis Shirley (living in 1192).

Life

Fulcher was a son of Sasuualo, whose seventeen hides at Ettington in Warwickshire are entered in the Domesday survey of 1086. His brother Henry, the eldest, held the other share of the family’s lands under the Earls Ferrers.

Fulcher is named in a grant by Tutbury Priory^W, which gave “Fulcherio filio Sewali” four bovates^W of land in Shirley in Derbyshire and a mill in Derby. It is the first holding at Shirley that the family is recorded to have had, and the family is said to have taken its surname from the place.

He held four knight’s fees of the earl in his own right. By the Exchequer’s return of 1166^W he was dead: it records Henry, son of Sewallis, and “Fulcherus frater suus” with the four fees, and adds that Sewallis now held the lands of both. That Sewallis was Fulcher’s son and Henry’s nephew, and he went on to be lord of both baronies.

The family

Fulcher’s wife is not known. He had four sons, Henry, Sewallis, Fulcher and Jordan. Henry, the first-born, handed his birthright to Sewallis, who became lord of Ettington.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Sewallis Shirley, Sewallis’s son Henry Shirley (died 1220), and the Shirleys of Ettington down to 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

The sources

Almost everything known of Fulcher comes from the deeds and records printed in the appendix of Evelyn Philip Shirley’s Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873): the Domesday entry for Sasuualo at Ettington (App. i), the Tutbury grant to “Fulcherio filio Sewali” (App. xi), and the Red Book of the Exchequer return of 1166 (App. xxvii), which reads “Fulcherus frater suus feoda iiij mil. et modo Sewaldus haeres utrorum tenet”. His death before 1166 rests on that return. The grant is undated, and which Earl Ferrers was his lord is not stated. The deeds write his name Fulcherus and Fulcherius.

Parentage

Stemmata Shirleiana calls Sasuualo the first recorded ancestor of the family. Statham’s survey of Derbyshire Domesday families (Derbyshire Archaeological Journal 49, 1927) also gives Saswalo five sons, Henry, Fulcher, Hugh, Sewal and Ralph. No wife is named for Fulcher in these records.

Other accounts

The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 5, 1949) counts fewer generations than Stemmata Shirleiana and does not fit a Fulcher who died before 1166 with a son Sewallis still living in 1192; this page follows Stemmata Shirleiana. A WikiTree profile gives Sewallis a father named Henry, which the printed deeds contradict.

Margaret de Grendon

A daughter, Margaret, wife of Serlo de Grendon, has been proposed for Fulcher. The Dale Abbey chronicle names her father as Ralph, son of Geremund, and no deed names her parents, so she is not counted among his children here.