♂Humphrey Forster

Humphrey Forster (died 1556) was a knight of Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, who styled himself in his will “Sir Humfrey fforster of Aldermaston in the Countie of Berk knyght”. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Margaret Forster.

Sir Humphrey made his will in September 1556 and was dead before the month was out: it was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury^W on 29 September. He left his daughter Elizabeth Covert twenty pounds’ worth of household goods, and the same to “my doughter Margaret Elmes”, “in suche household stuff as she shall chose”. Margaret was by then the wife of Anthony Elmes of Bolney, in the parish of Harpsden near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. A third daughter, Anne Forster, was to have four hundred marks^W when she married. He also remembered his sisters Anne and Dorothy, and made his son William Forster his sole executor.

Notes

His wife

Robert Battle and Henry B. Hoff’s study of the Elmes family in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (2022) gives his wife, Margaret’s mother, as Elizabeth Sandys, from the heralds’ visitations^W. The visitation itself, as printed by W. C. Metcalfe in 1885, says that Sir Humfrey Forster of Aldermaston “mar. Elizabeth, da. to Sir William Sandes, Kt, Lord Sandes of the Vyne”, so the marriage rests on the visitation as well as on the article.

His daughter Margaret

The 1566 heralds’ visitation of Berkshire, as printed in the same article, calls her “Margarett seconde doughter maried to Anthony Elmes of Bowlnehaye in com Oxon esquire”.