♀Margaret de Oddingseles

Margaret de Oddingseles (born about 1277) was an English heiress from Warwickshire who married John de Grey of Rotherfield Greys in Oxfordshire. When she was churched after the birth of their heir in 1300, her husband gave a feast so great that it was still talked of in the district twenty-one years later. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John de Grey (1300–1359).

Early life

Margaret was the youngest daughter of William de Oddingseles and his wife, Ela. Her father died in the spring of 1295. His son and heir, Edmund, aged 22, had died by the time the inquest on the lands was taken, and the inheritance passed to Edmund’s four sisters, Ida, Ela, Alice and Margaret. The jurors found Margaret, the youngest, eighteen years old at Easter that year.

Marriage and family

John de Grey married Margaret de Oddingseles, the youngest of the four sisters who shared the inheritance of the Oddingseles family of Solihull in Warwickshire. Their son and heir, John, was born at Rotherfield Greys on 29 October 1300 and baptized in the church there three days later. On St Andrew’s Day, 30 November, when Margaret was churched^W after the birth, John gave a great feast at Rotherfield. The abbots, the priors and almost all the leading men of the neighborhood came, and a merchant advanced his servants £6 to buy cloth for it. When the younger John proved his age in December 1321, the jurors still remembered the feast.

Widowhood

John de Grey died on 17 October 1311. The inquests on his lands found that he and Margaret had held Sculcoates in Yorkshire jointly, and that Solihull in Warwickshire and the right to present to the church of Arley were hers by inheritance. She was given her dower^W, and is said to have had licence in June 1312 to marry whom she would. She probably married again, to Robert de Moreby of Moreby in Yorkshire.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son John de Grey (1300–1359). One comes down through Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844); the other reaches Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825). The two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Birth and her sisters

The inquest after her father’s death (writ of 12 May 1295) names “Edmund his son, aged 22 and more” as heir, “but he is now dead. The said Edmund had four sisters Ida, Ela, Alice and Margaret, the youngest of whom, Margaret, was 18 years of age at Easter last” (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 3, no. 286). Her birth is placed about 1277 from that age. The same inquest mentions “Ela late the wife of the said William”. The calendar spells the family name Oddingeseles.

The feast of 1300

The proof of age of her son, taken at Rotherfield on 21 December 1321, is calendared in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 6, no. 336. One juror was “present at the banquet when Margaret mother of the said heir purified herself from her childbirth”; six others knew the date “because of the great feast which John de Grey made at Rutherefeld on the day of St. Andrew next after the said heir’s birth, when the said Margaret purified herself from the said heir; which feast is still notorious in those parts, because the abbots, priors and almost all the other good men (probi homines) of those parts were present.” Henry de Ardern, a merchant at the time, said that “the servants of John de Grey received from him 6 l. for buying cloths” for the feast.

Widowhood and a second marriage

Her husband’s inquest (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 5, no. 345) records Sculcoates as “jointly held by the said John with Margaret his wife”, Solihull and the advowson of Arley as “of the inheritance of Margaret his wife”, and dower for “Margaret, late the wife of the said John”. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, pp. 144-145) calls her the “4th and yst. da.” of William de Oddingeseles “by Ela, his wife”, gives the assignment of her dower on 20 January 1311/2 and her licence “to marry whom she would” on 10 June 1312, and says she “appears to have m., 2ndly, in or before 1319, Robert de Moreby, of Moreby, co. York”. The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 4, Solihull) dates that second marriage by 1315. Neither gives the date of her death.