♀Juliana (surname unknown)

Juliana was an Englishwoman of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries who, after the death of her husband, John Basing, held a third of the manor of Boylestone in Derbyshire in dower^W. She was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Joan Basing.

Her husband is said to have been a citizen of London, and he bought a share of Boylestone in 1293–94. John died between 1300 and June 1304, when the manor passed to his daughter Joan and her husband, Walter de Waldeshef. In March 1312, when Walter and Joan settled Boylestone again, a third of the manor was held in dower by Juliana de Basyng, John’s widow. No record names her as Joan’s mother, though she most likely was. Her own family and the date of her death are not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Joan Basing, Joan’s daughter Margaret de Waldeshef, Margaret’s son Thomas Shirley (died 1362), Thomas’s son Hugh Shirley (died 1403), Hugh’s 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

Her place in the family

The only record of Juliana is the fine of the morrow of the Annunciation, 5 Edward II (26 March 1312), by which Walter Waldeshef and Joan his wife settled Boylestone with remainder to their daughter Joan and her husband, Walter son of Thomas de Rydeware; it excepts “the third which Juliana de Basyng held in dowry” (Calendar of Derbyshire Fines, Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, vol. 15 (1893), p. 17). John de Basing bought the Boylestone moiety in 1293–94 (J. Charles Cox, Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, vol. 3 (1877), pp. 16–18) and held it in 1297 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 3, no. 423), so a dower third there makes Juliana his widow. That she was also the mother of Joan, his heiress, is likely but unproven. Walter and Joan’s daughter named first in the patent rolls of 1322, as Walter’s heir, was a Juliana (Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1321–1324, p. 142), a name that fits a grandmother but proves nothing. Her maiden name is not known.