♀Joan Twyford

Joan Twyford was an English gentlewoman of the fourteenth century, of a Derbyshire knightly family, and the wife of Henry Brailsford, lord of Brailsford. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Joan Brailsford. Through Joan she was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Family

Joan’s father, Sir Robert Twyford, came of a family settled at Kirk Langley and Spondon in Derbyshire. He was the eldest son of Sir John Twyford, sat in Parliament as a knight of the shire^W between 1352 and 1377, and was dead by 1391. Joan was probably one of his daughters and coheirs, though the old pedigrees disagree on her generation: one copy makes her a daughter of Sir John instead, and a historian of the Twyfords found “some confusion as to the generations”.

Marriage

Henry Brailsford married Joan Twyford, a daughter and coheir of Sir Robert Twyford. Their daughter, Joan Brailsford, was her father’s heir and became the second wife of Sir John Basset of Cheadle in Staffordshire; her son, Thomas Basset, inherited Brailsford through her and was known as Thomas Basset of Brailsford. The records do not give the date of the marriage or of either death.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Joan Brailsford, Joan’s son Thomas Basset, Thomas’s daughter Joan Basset and that Joan’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and on through Governor Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down 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

The Shirley pedigree in the heralds’ visitations^W of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905, p. 6) makes Sir Henry Brailsford’s wife “Jone d. & coheire of Sr Robert of Twyford”, son of Sir John Twyford, and names a second coheir, “Eleanor d. & coheire mar. to John Curzow of Bedelston in Darbyshire”. The Derbyshire visitation of 1569 (printed in The Genealogist, new series vol. 7, 1891, p. 74) likewise has John Curzon of Kedleston marrying “Eleanor, da. and heir of Robert Twyford, Kt.”

M. J. Sayer, “Twyford of Kirk Langley and Spondon”, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, vol. 94 (1974), pp. 26–31, works from the records: Sir John de Twyford was knight of the shire in 1314 and 1318 and last seen in 1346; his eldest son Sir Robert was knight of the shire from 1352 to 1377, alive in 1390 and dead by 1391. Sayer compares two copies of the 1611 Derbyshire visitation. The Queen’s College, Oxford, copy makes Sir John the father of “Joanna wife of Henry -“, while the Bodleian copy makes Sir Robert the father of “Margaret wife of Henry Brayford”; Sayer finds “some confusion as to the generations”. This page follows the Sussex pedigree, which names Sir Robert.

The dates lean the other way. Sir Ralph Shirley, the husband of Joan’s great-granddaughter Joan Basset, was born about 1391, which would put Joan Twyford’s own birth in the early fourteenth century, more easily the lifetime of a daughter of Sir John than of Sir Robert. This is an inference from the generations, not a statement of any of the sources.