♂Hugh Shirley

Hugh Shirley (died 1403) was an English knight of Lower Ettington in Warwickshire who inherited the estates of his uncle, the last Lord Basset of Drayton, and was killed fighting for Henry IV at the Battle of Shrewsbury^W in 1403. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Ralph Shirley.

Inheritance

By the family’s pedigrees, Hugh was the son of Sir Thomas Shirley, who died before 1362, and of Isabel de Meynell. His mother’s half-brother was Ralph, the last Lord Basset of Drayton^W. In the thirteenth year of Richard II’s reign (1389–90) Lord Basset settled his lands on Hugh and the male heirs of his body. Through this bequest the Shirleys came into large estates in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire, many of which stayed in the family for more than four centuries.

Shrewsbury

Hugh was a knight by the first year of Henry IV’s reign (1399–1400), and he is said to have been made the king’s grand falconer in 1400. In the summer of 1403 the Percys rose against the king, and the two armies met outside Shrewsbury. Hugh fought on the king’s side and was killed in the battle. He is said to have been one of the knights who fought that day dressed as the king and were taken for him by the rebels. Henry had several men wear his royal arms so that the rebels under Henry Percy, called Hotspur^W, who were hunting for the king himself, would strike at them instead.

Family

Hugh Shirley married Beatrice de Braose, daughter of Sir Peter de Braose and Joan de Percy, and their son Ralph Shirley succeeded to the Shirley estates.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Ralph Shirley and Ralph’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from her through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley (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

His parents and the Basset lands

William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, gives the pedigree: “Thomas de Shirley, miles, defunctus 36 E. 3.” and his wife Isabel, then “Hugo de Shirley miles 1 H. 4. obiit 4. H. 4.”, married to “Beatrix soror & haeres Joh de Brews”, then their son Ralph. Dugdale’s text calls the last Lord Basset Hugh’s uncle “by the mothers side” and has him entail his lands on Hugh in 13 Richard II. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 2, 1912, p. 4) says that the last Lord Basset “devised all his estates to his nephew (“mon neveu”), Hugh Shirley, and the heirs male of his body”, and that many of these lands stayed with the Shirleys until the death of Earl Ferrers in 1827. Dugdale names Hugh’s mother as a daughter of Lord Basset of Drayton; Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), pp. 149, 378 and 402, makes her Isabel de Meynell, daughter of Hugh de Meynell of Langley Meynell by Alice de Audley, whose first husband had been Ralph Basset of Drayton. That makes Isabel the last Lord Basset’s half-sister, as The Complete Peerage suspected (“possibly of the half blood”), and this page follows Richardson.

The falconer and the king’s double

The falconer’s office and the story of the king’s double come from Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (31st ed., 1869), under Ferrers: Hugh “was made grand falconer to Henry IV. in 1400, and he was killed fighting on the side of the same monarch at the battle of Shrewsbury, being one of those who were habited as the king, and taken for him by the opposite party.” Dugdale also has him slain at Shrewsbury in 4 Henry IV. A table in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (vol. 150, 1996, p. 324) gives his death as 1403.