♀Maud de Badlesmere

Maud de Badlesmere^W (about 1308 – May 1366) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of Bartholomew de Badlesmere, Lord Badlesmere^W. She married John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, and in 1338 became one of the four heirs of her brother Giles. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Margaret de Vere (died 1398).

Early life

Maud was the daughter of Bartholomew de Badlesmere and his wife, Margaret de Clare. She was a girl of about thirteen when the family fell. Her father, who had risen high in the king’s service as Steward of the King’s Household, joined the Earl of Lancaster’s rebellion against Edward II^W, and her mother is said to have refused the queen entry to Leeds Castle in Kent in the summer of 1321 and to have been sent to the Tower of London when the castle fell. After the rebels’ defeat at Boroughbridge her father, it is said, was captured and hanged as a traitor at Canterbury on 14 April 1322.

Marriage and inheritance

She is said to have been married first to Robert FitzPayne. She married John de Vere, Earl of Oxford, probably in 1336. When her brother Giles de Badlesmere died in 1338, Maud and her three sisters were found to be his heirs; the Kent jury described her as “Maud the wife of Sir John de Veer, earl of Oxford, aged 30 years”. Her share included land at Fulborn in Cambridgeshire, a manor with a castle at Leonhales in Herefordshire, and, it is said, the estate of Badlesmere in Kent itself, on the strength of which her husband and the earls after him styled themselves Lords Badlesmere, although she was not the eldest sister.

Their son Thomas, born about 1336, was the heir of both. The earl also had a younger son, Aubrey, and a daughter, Margaret, most likely Maud’s children as well.

Widowhood and death

John died on 23 January 1360, and Maud lived on as a widow for six years. She held the manors of Earl’s Colne, Stansted and Doddinghurst in Essex as her dower, and many others in Essex, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Kent that had been settled on her and John jointly. She died in May 1366, on 23 or 24 May by most of the juries’ findings. Her son Thomas, by then Earl of Oxford, was her heir, while two manors, Saxston in Cambridgeshire and Calverton in Buckinghamshire, passed under an earlier settlement to Aubrey de Veer.

Lines of descent

Both lines come down from her daughter Margaret de Vere through her daughter Margaret Loveyne (died 1408) and 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

Sources for her life

Her place among her brother’s heirs is from Giles de Badlesmere’s inquisition post mortem^W (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 185, pp. 131–149), which names “Elizabeth the wife of Sir William de Bohun, earl of Northampton, aged 28 years; Maud the wife of Sir John de Veer, earl of Oxford, aged 30 years; Margery the wife of Sir William de Ros, aged 34 years; and Margaret the wife of Sir John Typetot, aged 21 years” as “sisters and next heirs of the said Giles”, and refers to lands “acquired by Bartholomew, his father”. Two of its writs garble her name as Isabel and her husband’s as Thomas; the volume’s index corrects both. Her mother is the “Margaret, late the wife of Bartholomew de Badelesmere” of the same inquisition and of Bartholomew’s own (vol. 7, no. 104). Her husband’s inquisition (vol. 10, no. 638) holds Leonhales “of the inheritance of Maud his wife, who survives”. Her own inquisition is vol. 12, no. 81, pp. 60–63, on writs of 30 May 40 Edward III; it gives the dower and jointly held manors, the Fulborn land “of her own inheritance after the death of Giles de Batlesmere”, the castle at Lunhales and the remainders to Aubrey.

Her father’s offices, the rebellion, his hanging and her mother’s part at Leeds Castle are from G.E.C., Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (1910), p. 372, which adds that her mother was released on 3 November 1322. Her first marriage, the marriage of 1336 and her inheritance of Badlesmere are from the same work, 1st ed., vol. 6 (1895), p. 164, and the earls’ style of Lords Badlesmere from 1st ed., vol. 1 (1887), p. 215.

Her age

The Kent writ of 1338 gives her age as thirty, which puts her birth about 1308; other writs in the same inquisition give twenty-eight, the age Complete Peerage takes.

Her death date

40 Edward III ran from January 1366 to January 1367. The Essex jury found that she died on 23 May and the Cambridge juries on 24 May; in the Kent inquisition “23” is written over an erasure and the date is given later as 24 May; the Hereford jury gave 19 May. Complete Peerage gives May 1366.

Her children

Her inquisition calls Thomas “her son” and “son of Maud and John”. Aubrey is named there only as the holder of two manors in remainder, and Margaret is named as the Earl of Oxford’s daughter in the register of the Grey Friars of London. Maud as Margaret’s mother is from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 220; she is the only wife Complete Peerage gives the earl.