♂Humphrey Forster

Humphrey Forster is said to have been an esquire of Harpsden, near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England, and stands at the head of the pedigree of his descendants, the Forsters of Aldermaston, that the heralds recorded at their visitation^W of Berkshire in 1566. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Humphrey Forster.

He married Alice Stonor, a daughter of Thomas Stonor of Stonor, also an esquire of Oxfordshire. The heralds named only one of the couple’s children: their eldest son, Humphrey Forster, who was styled of Harpsden like his father and married the fourth daughter and one of the heirs of Sir Stephen Popham, a Hampshire knight.

Notes

The heralds’ pedigree

Everything known of Humphrey himself 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 opens with him as Humphrey Forster “of Harpeden, co. Oxon., Esq.”, who “mar. Alice, da. to Thomas Stoner” of Stonor, esquire, “and by her had issue” Humphrey, “his eldest son”. It names no other child of the couple, gives no parents for Humphrey and prints no dates for him or his wife. The pedigree takes its name from Aldermaston in Berkshire, where his grandson Sir George Forster and George’s heirs were seated; Humphrey and his son are both styled of Harpsden.

Three Humphreys

Three men of the name stand in the first four generations of the pedigree: Humphrey himself; his son, Humphrey Forster of Harpsden, who married Sir Stephen Popham’s daughter; and his great-grandson, Sir Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston, who married Elizabeth Sandys and died in 1556. Each has his own page.

When he lived

The pedigree gives no dates. The nearest date comes from his son’s marriage: Sir Stephen Popham, whose daughter the younger Humphrey married, died on 14 November 1444 (Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, 2005, pages 672–673).