♂George Forster

George Forster is said to have been a knight of Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and the husband of Elizabeth Delamere, the heiress of the Delamere family there. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Humphrey Forster.

George was the eldest son and heir of Humphrey Forster of Harpsden in Oxfordshire, by the fourth daughter and one of the heirs of Sir Stephen Popham, a Hampshire knight. His father and grandfather were both of Harpsden; George was seated at Aldermaston, the Delamere home. The family’s arms, as the heralds recorded them at their visitation^W of Berkshire in 1566, quartered^W the Forster shield with those of Popham, of Delamere and of one further family, the Delamere quarter showing two silver lions on red, one above the other, collared in blue. The quarters marked the two heiresses, his mother and his wife, who had married into the line.

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 calls him Sir George Forster of Aldermaston, “eldest son and heir to Humfrey”, and gives his wife as Elizabeth, “da. and sole heir to John” Delamere, son and heir to Sir Thomas Delamere of Aldermaston, knight. 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 his wife’s grandfather Sir Thomas Delamere, and the Delamere arms appear among the Forster quarters.

A second pedigree

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.