♀Margaret de Vere

Margaret de Vere^W (died 15 June 1398) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of John de Vere, Earl of Oxford^W, who was married three times: to Henry de Beaumont, Lord Beaumont, to Sir Nicholas de Lovaine of Penshurst in Kent, and to John Devereux, later Lord Devereux. She outlived all three. She was the eighteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Margaret Loveyne (died 1408).

Marriages

Margaret’s father was the Earl of Oxford, and her mother is said to have been his wife, Maud de Badlesmere; her brother was Sir Aubrey de Vere. She was married first, by February 1363, to Henry de Beaumont, Lord Beaumont, and they are said to have had four sons: John, who became Lord Beaumont, Henry, Richard and Thomas. Henry died in the summer of 1369.

Before March 1370 she married Sir Nicholas de Lovaine, a knight who held Penshurst and other manors in Kent, Cambridgeshire and Surrey. They had a son, Nicholas, born about 1370, and a daughter, Margaret Loveyne. Her sons by Beaumont were part of Nicholas’s arrangements too: his will remembered John, Lord Beaumont, and his manor of Stanton St John was to pass after him to “Henry, Richard and Thomas, sons of Sir Henry de Beawmond”.

Widowhood and last marriage

Nicholas made his will on 20 September 1375, leaving bequests to her and to their two children and naming her brother, and he died four days later. On 17 June 1379 she is said to have married, thirdly, John Devereux^W, a soldier and royal councillor who held Penshurst in her right. They had a son, John, and a daughter, Joan.

She kept a life interest in Nicholas’s London property: in 1396–97, when her daughter Margaret and her son-in-law, Philip Saint Clair, sought to grant away the reversion of houses in the parish of All Hallows the Great, the houses were “now held for life by Margaret, late wife of the said Nicholas”.

Devereux died on 22 February 1392/3, and Margaret on 15 June 1398. She was buried with him in the church of the Grey Friars^W in London, whose register recorded the couple in a raised tomb and named her “quondam domina de Bewmond, et filia comitis Oxonie”, once lady of Beaumont and daughter of the Earl of Oxford.

Lines of descent

Both lines come down from her daughter Margaret Loveyne through her son Thomas St. Clair (1401–1435) to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One continues through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), 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

Two records tie her to the Earls of Oxford. Her second husband’s will of 20 September 1375 (N. H. Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, vol. 1, 1826, pp. 98–99) leaves a bequest “to Sir Aubrey de Vere, brother to my said wife”, and the register of the Grey Friars of London (C. L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London, 1915, pp. 70–133) calls her “filia comitis Oxonie”; the manuscript there reads “Exonie”. Her mother, Maud de Badlesmere, is from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 220, and from G.E.C., Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. 3 (1890), p. 98, which notes that Dugdale had wrongly made John Devereux’s wife a daughter of Sir John Barre. The question of her parentage was argued in the Genealogists’ Magazine 15 (1965–68), cited by Richardson.

Sources for her marriages

The Beaumont marriage (before 15 February 1363, the date of an indult), Henry’s death on 25 July 1369 (Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 2, p. 61, gives June 1369) and their four sons, John, Henry, Richard and Thomas, the date of the Lovaine marriage, the Devereux marriage of 17 June 1379, Devereux’s offices, his death on 22 February 1392/3, their two children and her burial with him are from Richardson, pp. 219–221; Complete Peerage gives the same Devereux death and Grey Friars burial. The inquisition after Nicholas de Lovaine’s death (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 14, no. 172) names Henry, Richard and Thomas as sons of Sir Henry de Beaumont, and his will names John, Lord Beaumont. The London houses are from an inquisition of 1396–97 (The National Archives, C 143/427/18). Her death on 15 June 1398 is from Richardson and the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 17.