♀Joan Martin

Joan Martin (died 1322) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of William Martin, Lord Martin, who was married first to Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln^W, and then to the young Nicholas de Audley, Lord Audley^W, and who kept the title of Countess of Lincoln to the end of her life. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Alice de Audley (born 1313).

Family and first marriage

Joan’s father, William Martin, Lord Martin, held lands at Newport in Pembrokeshire, Blagdon in Somerset and Barnstaple in Devon. Her mother is said to have been Eleanor FitzPiers, the daughter of Sir Reynold FitzPiers and the widow of John de Mohun of Dunster.

Joan became the second wife of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, before June 1310. The earl died at his manor of Holborn on 5 February 1311 and was buried in St Paul’s, and in May and June 1311 Joan was given her dower from his lands.

Marriage to Nicholas de Audley

Her second husband was about twenty, a younger son who had inherited the Audley lordship of Heleigh, in Staffordshire, from his brother. Nicholas de Audley married Joan Martin, the widow of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, by June 1313. The Complete Peerage records that he married her without the king’s licence, which the widow of a tenant of the Crown was bound to obtain before she married again. They had two children: a son, James, born at Kneesall in Nottinghamshire in January 1314, and a daughter, Alice.

Nicholas died on 28 November 1316, three years after the marriage, and their son James, still a small child, was his heir.

Widowhood

In 1318 the king accused Joan of scheming to thwart the hearing of a case before Bishop Walter de Langton^W. She went on dealing in land in Staffordshire: in 1319 she granted all her land in Little Chell to Richard, son of William de Chelle, and his wife Maud for a yearly rent of ten shillings, and in 1321 she sued Peter Giffard and his wife Ela for ten marks of rent in Legh Underbrokhurst.

She died shortly before 27 October 1322, when the king ordered the inquest into her lands. It still named her as the late wife of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and found her son James, aged nine, to be her next heir. In 1326 her brother William Martin died, and his heirs were her sister Eleanor, the wife of Philip de Columbers, and her son James, who through her inherited the Martin barony of Barnstaple.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Alice de Audley, Alice’s daughter Isabel de Meynell (died 1393), Isabel’s son Hugh Shirley (died 1403), 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^W (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

Parents

The inquest of 1326 on her brother (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 6, no. 710, William son of William Martyn) names his heirs as “Eleanor his sister, the wife of Philip de Columbariis, aged 40 and more, and James, son of Nicholas Daudele [alias de Audelegh] and of Joan his wife another sister, aged 14 on the morrow of the Circumcision last”, which makes Joan a daughter of the William Martyn whose own inquest (no. 563, writ of 8 October 1324) found “William his son, aged 30” his heir. No record names her mother. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 148, makes her a daughter of William Martin “by his 1st wife, Eleanor daughter of Reynold Fitz Peter”; The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 7, under Lincoln) calls Eleanor the widow of John de Mohun, of Dunster, and the daughter of Sir Reynold FitzPiers.

Her two marriages

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 7, under Lincoln) has Henry de Lacy marry her, as his second wife, before 16 June 1310, die at his manor of Holborn on 5 February 1310/1, and be buried in St Paul’s on 28 February; his widow had livery of her dower on 22 May and 26 June 1311. Richardson, p. 148, has her marry Nicholas de Audley “shortly before 6 June 1313”; The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 339) puts that marriage in 1312, made without licence. James’s birth at Kneesall is 7 January 1313/4 in Richardson; The Complete Peerage volume 1 gives 8 January 1312/3.

Widowhood and death

The acts of 1318, 1319 and 1321 are from Richardson, p. 149, who ends: “Joan, Countess of Lincoln, died shortly before 27 Oct. 1322”. The inquest on her lands (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 6, no. 371, writ of 27 October 1322) found “James Daudele, her son, aged 9” her next heir. The Complete Peerage (vol. 1, p. 339) has her die between February 1319/20 and 1 August 1322. Her son’s inheritance of Barnstaple is from Richardson, p. 149.