♀Katherine Giffard

Katherine Giffard^W was an English noblewoman who married Nicholas de Audley, lord of Heleigh in Staffordshire, and was widowed in 1299. She was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Nicholas de Audley (1292–1316).

Marriage and family

Nicholas de Audley married Katherine Giffard, a daughter of John Giffard of Brimpsfield^W, in Gloucestershire, by his first wife, Maud, the heiress of Walter de Clifford. Katherine was most likely born about 1272, and through her mother she was one of the co-heiresses of the Clifford lands; it was in her right that Nicholas held the castle of Llandovery^W in Wales. They had two sons, Thomas, born about 1289, and Nicholas, born on 11 November 1292, and a daughter, Ela; Katherine was most likely the mother of all three.

Widowhood

Nicholas died before 28 August 1299, leaving as his heir their elder son, Thomas, a boy of ten. He left a will, and in 1303 Ralph de Hengham sued his widow, Katherine, and three others, the executors of that will, for a debt of 208 marks. Thomas did not live to come of age, and in January 1308 the inquest after his death named his younger brother Nicholas as his heir. In 1313 she presented a priest to the church of Monnington, in Herefordshire, and in 1313–14 she granted the castle of Llandovery to her daughter, Ela, and Ela’s husband, James de Perrers.

Ledbury

In her widowhood Katherine is said to have withdrawn into a religious life at Ledbury. A genealogical journal of 1914 identifies her with Saint Katherine Audley, “the semi-legendary patron saint of Ledbury”, a widow who “retired to Ledbury where she might lead the quiet life of a recluse”; in the centuries that followed, it adds, “many pretty legends arose concerning her.”

She was still living in 1322, the year her half-brother, John Giffard, was captured at the Battle of Boroughbridge^W and executed as a traitor. She had most likely died by 1327, when the inquest into John’s lands named a grandson to represent her among his kin.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Nicholas de Audley, Nicholas’s daughter Alice de Audley (born 1313), her 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

Parentage and birth

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 1, 1910, p. 338, under Audley): “He m. Catherine, da. of John Giffard, [1st Lord Giffard of Brimpsfield], by his 1st wife, Maud, widow of William Longespee … da. and h. of Walter de Clifford.” Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), pp. 147–148 (Audley 6), gives the same parents and adds that she “was born about 1272 (aged 27 in 1299), and was co-heiress c.1283 to her mother”. Her birth year rests on that age.

Her children

The inquests on her husband (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 3, no. 536, 1299) and on her son Thomas (vol. 5, no. 62, 1308) name Thomas and Nicholas as father and son, and as brothers, but neither names their mother. Richardson (pp. 147–148) makes Katherine the mother of Thomas, Nicholas and Ela, and gives Ela as “wife successively of Gruffudd ab Owain, James de Perrers, and Peter Giffard”.

The years as a widow

Richardson (p. 148) gives the suit of 1303 by Ralph de Hengham against “his widow, Katherine, and three others, executors of the will of Nicholas de Audley”, her presentation to Monnington in 1313, the grant of Llandovery Castle to Ela and James de Perrers in 1313–14, and that “Katherine became a nun at Ledbury Priory … She was living in 1322.”

Saint Katherine of Ledbury

The quoted words are from The Genealogist, new series, vol. 30 (1914), pp. 190–191, as Richardson (p. 148) quotes it: “Saint Catherine Audley [widow of Nicholas de Audley] … the semi-legendary patron saint of Ledbury, in Herefordshire … retired to Ledbury where she might lead the quiet life of a recluse, and as a result of her piety, kindness and general attractiveness, became sainted in the hearts and minds of the country people. In the centuries that followed many pretty legends arose concerning her.” Richardson also cites Baring-Gould’s Lives of the Saints, vol. 16 (1914), appendix, p. 316, for a life of St Katherine Audley. Richardson calls her a nun; the 1914 article calls her a recluse.

Her death

Walter Goodwin Davis, The Ancestry of Abel Lunt (1963), p. 204, describes the inquest held at Wilton in 1327 into the lands of John Giffard of Brimpsfield, “captured at the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322” and “hanged, drawn and quartered”, who was childless. He was the only son of the elder John Giffard by his second wife, Margaret Neville; by his first wife, Maud, the elder John had two daughters, “Katherine Giffard who had married Nicholas de Audeley and was represented by a grandson in 1327, and Eleanor Giffard who married Fulk l’Estrange”. That she died between 1322 and 1327 is an inference from Richardson’s date and this inquest.