♀Margaret Despencer

Margaret Despencer was a fourteenth-century Englishwoman of an Oxfordshire landed family. Her mother was born a Draycote, of Draycote in Waterstock. When the descent of the Draycote lands was traced in 1395, the claim of her brother Nicholas was found to run through her and her daughter Alice to her grandson, William Baldington. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Alice (died 1393), and through Alice an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Family

Her mother, Margaret, was a sister of John de Draycote and of Agnes, and her brother was Nicholas Despenser. In 1324 a Margaret was the wife of John le Despenser of Aldebury, now Albury, when he had a royal licence to settle that manor on the two of them and their son John, with remainders to the younger sons Thomas, Nicholas and Richard and then to his own heirs. Margaret was most likely their daughter. Her husband’s name is not known.

Her daughter Alice married John Baldington. Well before 1376 the couple were granted Albury, written Aldebury, to hold for themselves and the heirs of their bodies, with the remainder to Alice’s own heirs. Alice outlived her husband and died on 4 June 1393, leaving her fifteen-year-old son William as her heir.

The Draycote inheritance

The manor of Draycote had been settled on her uncle John de Draycote and his wife Katharine, with remainders to his sister Agnes and then to Margaret’s mother. Katharine died on 20 June 1394 as the wife of Henry Chalfhunt, and the inquisition post mortem^W taken at Dorchester on 12 March 1395 followed those remainders down the generations. Along Margaret’s mother’s line it came to Nicholas, and from him to his heir, William, “son of Alice daughter of Margaret daughter of Margaret sister of Agnes”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Alice, Alice’s son William Baldington, William’s daughter Agnes Baldington, her son Thomas Denton, Thomas’s son John Denton, John’s daughter Alice Denton, her son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and Thomas Dudley’s 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

The 1395 inquisition

The inquisition taken after the death of Katharine, wife of Henry Chalfhunt (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 17, no. 455), on a writ of 26 January in the eighteenth year of Richard II, records that Draycote in Waterstock had been settled on John de Draycote and Katharine, with remainders to “Agnes sister of the said John” and then to “Margaret sister of the said Agnes”. It names “Nicholas Spencere son of the said Margaret, whose heir William son of John de Baldyngdon is, to wit, son of Alice daughter of Margaret daughter of Margaret sister of Agnes”, and says Katharine “died on 20 June last”. The volume’s index lists the elder Margaret as “Despencer … Margaret (Draycote)” and her daughter under Despencer, with a cross-reference to Alice Baldyngton. The surname Despencer is the index’s, from her father’s family; the records also write it Despenser and Spencere.

Her father

The Calendar of Patent Rolls^W (1324–1327, p. 6) records on 8 July 1324 a “Licence for John le Despenser of Aldebury to enfeoff William le Despenser of the manor of Aldebury … and for the latter to regrant the same to the said John and Margaret his wife and John their son, and the heirs of the body of the latter, with successive remainders in tail to Thomas, Nicholas and Richard brothers of the latter, and to the right heirs of the said John le Despenser.” That this Margaret was the Draycote sister, and so Margaret Despencer’s mother, rests on the matching names, Margaret and her son Nicholas. That John le Despenser was Margaret Despencer’s father is a further inference: it would explain how a manor entailed on his right heirs came to her daughter Alice, and why the grant to John and Alice Baldington reserved it to Alice’s heirs. The Victoria County History of Oxfordshire (vol. 5, ‘Albury’, pp. 8–14) suggests that Alice was Nicholas Despenser’s daughter; the 1395 inquisition makes him her uncle.