♀Margery Greville

Margery Greville (died 1542) was a daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Greville of Arle Court, in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas^W, and the wife of Sir Richard Lygon of Madresfield, in Worcestershire. She was the fourteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Henry Ligon (died 1577).

Family

Margery’s father, Sir William Greville, held Arle Court, Elmstone (in Elmstone Hardwicke) and Staverton, all in Gloucestershire. Her mother is said to have been the daughter and heiress of John Arrell, of Arrell; her own first name is not recorded. Margery shared in her father’s estate as one of his co-heiresses, and through her, her husband came to hold Arle Court and Staverton.

Marriage

Before 1511 Margery married Richard Lygon, the son and heir of Richard Lygon of Madresfield and his wife, Anne Beauchamp. Her father-in-law died at Madresfield on 1 May 1512, and her husband, then twenty-one, succeeded to the family lands in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire. The couple had four sons, William, Ferdinand, John and Henry, and six daughters, Ursula, Elizabeth, Mary, Anne, Susanna and Barbara. Henry, the fourth son, made his home at Upton St Leonards, in Gloucestershire.

Her husband is said to have been knighted at the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn^W, the second wife of Henry VIII. Margery died in 1542. Richard then married a second wife, Joan, and died on 20 March 1556.

The family

William Ligon, the son and heir, was born about 1512 and was married under a contract of 1529 to Eleanor Dennis, a daughter of Sir William Dennis of Dyrham, in Gloucestershire. In 1538 he was among the gentlemen listed by Lord Cromwell^W as “meet to be preferred in the King’s service”, and in 1544 he, like his father, was serving in the army in France. He inherited Madresfield and his mother’s lands at Arle Court, Elmstone and Staverton, served as sheriff of Worcestershire, and died at Madresfield on 29 September 1567; he was buried at Austin Friars^W, in London.

Notes

Sources

Margery’s parents, her marriage, her children and the year of her death are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 510 (with her son Henry at p. 264), and from the same author’s Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, p. 634. Richardson cites Foss’s Judges of England (1857) for her father, Nash’s Collections for the History of Worcestershire (1782), the heralds’ visitation^W of Worcestershire of 1569, the Victoria County History of Worcestershire and of Gloucestershire, and the Madresfield muniments of the Lygon family (1929). The account of William Ligon is from Magna Carta Ancestry, pp. 510–511.

Her mother

Magna Carta Ancestry leaves a blank where the first name of Margery’s mother should be, giving only “daughter and heiress of John Arrell, of Arrell”.

Her name

The 1569 Visitation of Worcestershire, as Richardson quotes it, records the marriage as “S’ Richard Lygon K. = Margart da. & coeheire to Wm Grevell Judg.” Richardson calls her Margery in the entry itself and Margaret in the list of her children, and Burke’s Peerage (1869) calls her Margaret, “dau and heir of Mr Justice Greville, of the court of Common Pleas”. An online family tree also calls her Margaret.

Dates

Richardson gives no date or place for Margery’s birth or for her marriage, beyond its being before 1511, and no day or place for her death in 1542.

The knighthood

Richardson writes that Richard was knighted “in 1535 at the Coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn”. The coronation of Anne Boleyn took place on 1 June 1533, so either the year or the occasion is wrong in the account.