♀Lady Isabel (surname unknown)

Isabel (died 28 August 1285) was an English heiress, married three times, who held Chiselborough in Somerset of the king by barony in her own right, with manors in Sussex and Northamptonshire. It was her inheritance, and her husbands held it only through her. She was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Joan de Aldham.

Early life

Isabel was one of the heirs of William de Montague, a landholder in Sussex, and his wife, Agnes. William died about 1238, leaving two daughters as his heirs: Margaret, already the wife of William de Echingham, and Isabel, still a child. In 1239 Agnes sued Isabel’s guardians, Katherine and Michael, for her dower^W.

In July 1248 the king gave the wardship^W of the land “and of Isabel one of the heirs, of William de Monte Acuto” to Stephen de Salinis, with a share of the church of Jevington. On 25 May 1249, at Winchester, the king confirmed that Stephen had sold the wardship of Isabel’s lands, and the right to arrange her marriage, to her mother, Agnes de Monte Acuto. A wardship was property that could be bought and sold, and its holder chose the ward’s husband; with this purchase that choice passed to her mother.

Marriages

Her first husband was Ralph de la Haye. She kept dower lands from him at Oxindon in Gloucestershire and at Middleton and Newenham in Sussex, but no land of his gift.

Isabel, the widow of Ralph de la Haye, married Thomas de Aldham, and their eldest son, Baldwin, was born about 1259. They had two more children, William, born about 1262, and Joan. Isabel brought the larger estate: Chiselborough in Somerset, which she held of the king as a tenant-in-chief^W by barony, Little Preston in Northamptonshire, and manors in Sussex, among them Jevington, Tarring and Brambletye. Thomas held Chiselborough “through Isabel his wife of the inheritance of the said Isabel”. On 3 February 1274 the couple added a messuage, 24 acres of land and an acre of meadow at Exceat in Sussex, which they took from Henry son of Gilbert de Perles.

Thomas died in 1275, before 11 December, when the king’s writ ordered an inquiry into his lands. The jurors found that Isabel now held Chiselborough of the king herself, and that Baldwin, aged 16, was the heir of Thomas and Isabel. By 10 December 1279 she had married Richard de Pevensey, and on that day the two made a fine over her manors in Somerset, Buckinghamshire, Sussex and Cornwall, which the record calls her right.

Death

Isabel died on 28 August 1285, the Tuesday before the feast of St Giles in the thirteenth year of Edward I. The inquisitions post mortem^W taken after her death call her Lady Isabel de la Haye, the title of a knight’s wife taken from the name of her first husband, though she had married twice since. She held eleven and three-quarter knights’ fees^W of the honor of Laigle in Sussex, and the jurors found her firstborn son, Baldwin, aged 23, her heir. Her inheritance was found in 1327, with Thomas’s lands, to descend to their daughter Joan’s son, John Saint Clair (1301–1335).

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Joan, her son John Saint Clair and the Saint Clairs down to Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), and from Edith through five generations of daughters to Susanna Thorne, the mother of Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. From Thomas Dudley’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683), one line 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

Sources for her life

Her death, her title and her heir come from the inquisitions taken after her death (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 2, Edward I, no. 571). Her lands in 1275 and her dower from Ralph de la Haye come from the inquisitions after Thomas de Aldham’s death (vol. 2, no. 193; writ of 11 December 1275), which note that she “had not any land of the gift of Ralph de la Haye her first husband”. The wardship grants are in the Calendar of the Patent Rolls, Henry III, vol. 4 (1247–1258), p. 21 (32 Henry III, July 1248) and p. 41 (33 Henry III, 25 May 1249). The fines are nos. 829 (3 February 1274) and 904 (10 December 1279) in L. F. Salzmann’s abstract of the Sussex feet of fines; in the second she and her husband are “Ricm. de Peuekes’ et Isab. ux’ ejus”, and the manors “jus Isab.”.

Her parents

No record of her own lifetime calls her William de Montague’s daughter; the link rests on her lands. In 1285 Lady Isabel de la Haye held Jevington, Brambletye, and fees in Preston, Holindale, Ratton, Charlton, Burton and Crowlink of the honor of Laigle, the same fees William de Montague defended in a suit of 1234, and the 1248 wardship of “Isabel one of the heirs” of William included a share of the church of Jevington. L. F. Salzmann, in Sussex Archaeological Collections vol. 57 (1915), pp. 173–176, working from the Curia Regis rolls, gives William’s death “about 1238”, his “two daughters, Margaret, wife of William de Echingham, and Isabel, a minor”, and Agnes’s dower suits of 1239 against Katherine and Michael “as guardians of Isabel, the young daughter of William”. An East Grinstead local history calls her “heiress of William of Montacute”, and the index to vol. 140 (1986) of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register enters her as “Isabel (Montague) (de la Haye)”. Chiselborough was a fee of the honor of Mortain, whose seat in Somerset was Montacute, which fits.

Her marriages

Salzmann gives her marriage to Ralph de la Haye as before 1252, his death in 1254, and her marriage to Richard de Pevensey within three years of Thomas’s death. He gives Thomas and Isabel two children, Baldwin and Joan; the pedigree endorsed on the 1327 inquisitions after the death of her grandson Francis de Aldham (vol. 7, Edward III, no. 5) says they “had issue three children”, William dying without an heir.

Her date of death

The inquisition gives “Tuesday before St. Giles, 13 Edw. I”. St Giles’s day, 1 September, fell on a Saturday in 1285, so the Tuesday before was 28 August.

Baldwin’s age

The 1275 inquisitions give Baldwin’s age as 16, which puts his birth about 1259, the year used here. The 1285 inquisition gives him as 23 at the feast of St Leonard (6 November) 1284, which would put it about 1261.

Her name

Her father’s name is written de Monte Acuto, Montague or Montacute. “De la Haye”, by which she was known at her death and in the 1327 memorandum, was the surname of her first husband.