♂John Saint Clair

John Saint Clair, written in the records as John de Sencler, the elder, was an Englishman whose marriage to Joan de Aldham brought the Aldham family’s manors in Sussex, Somerset and Northamptonshire to the Saint Clairs. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son John Saint Clair (1301–1335).

Marriage and family

His parents are not known. He married Joan, the daughter of Thomas de Aldham and his wife, Isabel, and their son, John, was born about 1301. Joan’s brothers, Baldwin and William, stood before her as heirs to their parents’ lands, but William died without an heir, and when Baldwin’s son, Francis de Aldham, died in or before February 1327 with none of his own, the inheritance came to Joan’s son.

The inquisitions post mortem^W into Francis’s lands named “John son of John Seyntcler, his kinsman, aged 26 years on the feast of the Purification last past” as his next heir, and in Somerset the jurors called him the son of “Joan late the wife of John de Sencler, the elder”. The manors that came to the Saint Clairs in this way, among them Brambletye, Jevington, Tarring and Exceat in Sussex and Chiselborough in Somerset, were held in turn by his son, his grandson John and his great-grandson Philip.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son John, John’s son John Saint Clair (1332–1387), that John’s son Philip Saint Clair (1365–1408), Philip’s son Thomas St. Clair (1401–1435), Thomas’s daughter Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), Edith’s daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526), Alice’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, Elizabeth’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

Sources for his life

His marriage, his son and the Aldham inheritance come from the inquisitions taken after the death of Francis de Aldham (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 7, Edward III, no. 5; writ of 12 February 1327). The return carries an endorsed pedigree that ends “and Joan, who married John Seyncler (and had issue) John, who now claims.” The manors named there are the same as those in the inquisitions taken after his son’s death (vol. 7, no. 686; writ of 18 February 1335), where the son is “John son of John de Sancto Claro, de Seyncler or de Seyntclere”; that joins the heir of 1327 to the man who died in 1335. The later holders of the manors are in the inquisitions after the death of his grandson John in 1387 (vol. 16, nos. 458–459) and in a grant of Brambletye and Tarring to Philip Saint Clair and his wife, Margaret, in 1397.

His death

No date of death is known for him. The 1327 inquisitions call his wife “late the wife of John de Sencler, the elder”, which does not settle whether he was then still living.

A different account

Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (1869), in its account of the Gage family, says the manor of Heighton St. Clere came to the family “by the marriage of John de St. Clere (who d. 1327) with Isolda, sole heir of Thomas de Aldham”. The inquisitions of 1327 name his wife Joan, and her son, not she, as the heir; the inquisition of 1275 after Thomas de Aldham’s death names Thomas’s sons Baldwin and William as his heirs.

His name

The name is written Seyntcler, Seyncler and Sencler in the inquisitions of 1327, and de Sancto Claro in those of 1335.