♂Henry Brailsford

Henry Brailsford was an English knight of the fourteenth century, lord of the manor of Brailsford in Derbyshire, whose daughter and heir, Joan, carried the Brailsford inheritance to the Bassets. He was the nineteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joan Brailsford. Through Joan he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Family

Henry’s family had held the manor of Brailsford for generations. He was the son of Ralph Brailsford, lord of Brailsford, who is said to have been a knight and who was dead by 21 October 1344; Henry succeeded him. Above Ralph the line ran back through three earlier Henrys and a Robert to a Nicholas Brailsford, who died before 1166; the family is said to descend from Aelfwine, a landholder of 1086.

The Brailsfords’ arms were a black cinquefoil on a gold field, and Sir Henry probably sealed with them in 1356, the last year in which he can be placed. His father’s seal had shown a different coat, three cinquefoils on a bend.

Marriage

Henry Brailsford married Joan Twyford, a daughter and coheir of Sir Robert Twyford. Their daughter, Joan Brailsford, was her father’s heir and became the second wife of Sir John Basset of Cheadle in Staffordshire; her son, Thomas Basset, inherited Brailsford through her and was known as Thomas Basset of Brailsford. The records do not give the date of the marriage or of either death.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Joan Brailsford, her son Thomas Basset, Thomas’s daughter Joan Basset and Joan’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and on through Governor Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One 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

The pedigrees

Henry’s place in the family is known only from compiled pedigrees. The Shirley pedigree in the heralds’ visitations^W of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905, pp. 5–6) sets out the Brailsfords: Nicholas; his son Henry, “Lord of the manor of Brailleford in Darbyshire”; Sir Henry, “son & heire”; Ralph, “Lord of Braylesford”; and Sir Henry, who married “Jone d. & coheire of Sr Robert of Twyford”. Their daughter Joan is the second wife of “Sr Jo Bassett of Chedle in com. Stafford Knight”, and her son Thomas is “heire to his mother”.

F. N. Craig, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 142 (1988), p. 243, likewise makes Joan the daughter and heir of Sir Henry Brailsford and the second wife of Sir John Basset of Cheadle. For the Brailsford descent he refers to S. P. H. Statham’s article “The Brailsfords” in the Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, vol. 59 (1938), which traces Sir Henry’s line back to Aelfwine, a landholder of 1086. Statham’s chart (p. 66) sets three Henrys and a Robert between Nicholas, who died before 1166, and Ralph, so the visitation’s Nicholas is in fact the great-grandfather of its first Henry; the descent given above follows Statham. A plea of 1424 in the Court of Common Pleas, printed in The Genealogist, new series, vol. 17 (1901), pp. 22–23, agrees with him on the last generations: Henry, son of Henry, living in 1285–86; then Ralph; then Henry; then Joan, daughter and heir, the wife of Sir John Basset. Statham has Ralph dead by 1344 and succeeded by Henry, who was named a collector of subsidies on 21 October that year.

His seal and his dates

Maxwell Craven’s A Derbyshire Armory (p. 24) gives the arms of Brailsford of Brailsford as “Or a cinquefoil sable”, “Borne 1356 by Sir Henry de Brailsford of Brailsford”, citing a seal (Local MS 6341). The same entry gives “A seal of Ralph Brailsford kt (d. 1344), father of Sir Henry” with the coat on a bend three cinquefoils, and traces the later Brailsfords of Seanor’s arms to it. Ralph’s knighthood rests on this entry alone; the visitation calls him only “Lord of Braylesford”. The 1344 collectorship and the 1356 seal are the only dates attached to Henry.

Online family trees disagree about him. One makes his daughter Joan the child of a Henry Brailsford who lived from 1259 to 1304, a generation above the Sussex pedigree’s Sir Henry, son of Ralph; another gives Henry a death about 1356. None of them cites a source, and they are not used here.