♀Joan Fabian

Joan Fabian was an Englishwoman of fifteenth-century London. She was the fourteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Richard Fettiplace (died 1510 or 1511).

Marriages and children

John Fettiplace is said to have married Joan Fabian, the daughter of Edward Fabian and the widow of Robert Horne, an alderman^W of London. With Robert she is said to have had a daughter, Anne Horne. John, a younger son of Sir Thomas Fettiplace of East Shefford, is said to have been a citizen and draper of London and a member of the household of King Henry VI. John had four sons, Richard, Anthony, Thomas and William, and a daughter, Margaret, most likely all by Joan.

John made his will on 22 August 1464, when all five children were still under age, and it was proved on 3 September 1464. The records do not give the date of Joan’s death. Richard, the son and heir, grew up to make his home at East Shefford.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Richard, Richard’s daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s 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

Her parentage and marriages

Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., p. 264) calls her son Richard the “son and heir of John Fettiplace, of East Shefford, Berkshire, Citizen and draper of London, member of the household of King Henry VI, by Joan, daughter of Edward Fabian”. The 1623 Berkshire visitation pedigree (The Four Visitations of Berkshire, Harleian Society, vol. I, p. 91) names John’s wife as “Jana Eduardi Fabian vidua Jo: Horne Aldermani Lond:”, Joan, daughter of Edward Fabian and widow of an alderman of London whose first name it gives as “Jo.” rather than Robert. Richardson (pp. 421, 513, 681) names Anne Horne as the “daughter of Robert Horne, Alderman of London, by Joan, daughter of Edward Fabian”; Anne married in turn Sir William Harcourt of Maxstoke, Sir John Stanley of Elford and Sir William Norreys. The bequests to the five children in John Fettiplace’s will (PROB 11/5, quire “Godyn”) do not name their mother.