♀Margaret de Waldeshef

Margaret de Waldeshef was an Englishwoman of the early fourteenth century, one of the five daughters of Walter de Waldeshef of Boylestone in Derbyshire, and the wife of Sir Ralph Shirley of Lower Ettington in Warwickshire; the Shirley manors of Ettington and Shirley were settled on the couple in 1316. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Thomas Shirley (died before 1362).

Family

Margaret was a daughter of Walter de Waldeshef and Joan Basing. Her mother was the only daughter and heiress of John de Basing, a citizen of London who had bought a share of the manor of Boylestone in 1293–94, and Walter and Joan held Boylestone together in 1304 and again in 1312. Walter is said to have served Edward II as his butler. In July 1322 Margaret and her sisters Juliana, Elizabeth, Isabella and Joan were named together as Walter’s daughters in the patent rolls^W, with Juliana as his heir.

Marriage

Margaret married Ralph Shirley, the son of James Shirley. In 1316 the elder Sir Ralph de Shirley settled Ettington on himself for life, with remainder “to Ralph son of James de Shirley and Margaret daughter of Walter Waldeshef and their issue”. By a fine of 13 October that year he also acknowledged that the manor of Shirley in Derbyshire belonged to Walter Waldeshef, Margaret’s father, and was to pass after Walter’s death to Ralph and Margaret. Her father made his will at Boylestone on 25 November 1333, and after his death Shirley was to come to Margaret and Ralph. Ralph probably died in 1342, and the date of Margaret’s own death is not known. Their son was most likely Sir Thomas Shirley, who followed his father at Ettington and died before 1362.

In the remains of the old parish church of Holy Trinity at Ettington Park, the oldest of the Shirley monuments is a pair of stone effigies of a knight in chain mail and his lady, traditionally named as Sir Ralph de Shirley and his wife Margaret de Waldeshef. The year given with the knight, 1327, is close to the elder Sir Ralph’s death, so which Ralph the figure shows is uncertain.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Thomas Shirley, 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 parents

Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873), p. 23, calls her “daughter and coheiress of Walter de Waldershef, valettus … by Joan his wife, daughter and heiress of John Basinge”, and makes Walter governor of the High Peak in the fifth year of Edward II (1311–12). William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, calls her father butler to Edward II, but gives her to an earlier Ralph de Shirley of 7 Edward I; this page follows the Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 5, 1949, p. 79), which puts the 1316 settlement on the younger Ralph, son of James.

J. Charles Cox’s Notes on the Churches of Derbyshire, vol. 3 (1877), pp. 16–18, has Roger de Ridware sell a moiety of Boylestone “in the twenty-second year of Edward I., to John de Basing, a citizen of London”, and adds that “John de Basing had an only daughter and heiress, Joanna”. Walter and Joan appear together in the Derbyshire fines for Boylestone in 32 Edward I (June 1304) and 5 Edward II (March 1312), printed in the Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, vols. 14 and 15.

Her sisters

The Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1321–1324, p. 142 (5 July 1322, at York), names Juliana as Walter’s “daughter and heir”, and Elizabeth, Isabella, Joan and Margaret as “daughters of the said Walter”. A settlement of 1321–22 on Walter’s foresterships of Hopedale (The National Archives, C 143/152/3) gives a remainder to “James de Shirle, the said Margaret and the heirs of her body” - James rather than Ralph; the records do not explain the difference.

Her father’s will

Walter Waldeshef’s will, dated at Boylestone on 25 November 1333, was enrolled in the Court of Husting in London (Sharpe, Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, vol. 1, 1889, p. 395). It left rents in Cheap and the Vintry for chantries at Boylestone and at St Michael Paternoster Church, and provided for a sale after the death of his wife Joan without an heir male of his body.

The effigies

The Victoria County History describes the monument in the south transept of the old church as “the recumbent effigies of Sir Ralph de Shirley 1327 and Margaret (de Waldeshief) his wife”. The lady wears a long robe and mantle, and her head rests on a cushion held by angels, now headless. The year 1327 points to the elder Sir Ralph, but the lady’s name points to the younger Ralph’s wife.

A daughter Isabella

Stemmata Shirleiana, p. 23, also gives Margaret a daughter Isabella, betrothed to Geoffrey de Burgylon of Weston Underwood. The deed for Isabella’s lands in Shirley is dated 1282 and calls her a daughter of Ralph de Shirley, son of Sir James; that fits the elder Sir Ralph rather than Margaret’s husband, and Isabella is not counted among Margaret’s children here.

Her son’s death

William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, has Sir Thomas Shirley “defunctus 36 E. 3.”, dead before the thirty-sixth year of Edward III began on 25 January 1362, and this page follows him there. The Victoria County History and Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry have Thomas die in 1362.