♀Maud de Saint Hilary

Maud de Saint Hilary was an English noblewoman of Norman descent, the heiress of James de Saint Hilary, who married first Roger de Clare, Earl of Hertford, and then William d’Aubigny, Earl of Arundel. She was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by four separate lines of descent, all through her son Richard de Clare (died 1217): by three of them she was her twenty-fifth great-grandmother, and by the fourth her twenty-sixth.

Her family

Maud’s father, James de Saint Hilary, took his name from Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët, near Mortain in Normandy, and held land at Dalling in Norfolk. In 1138, with the consent of his wife Aveline and his brother Piers, he gave ten librates of land at Dalling to Savigny Abbey^W in Normandy. Maud was his daughter and heiress, and his lands, the honor of St Hilary, passed through her to the Clares; her grandson Gilbert de Clare inherited them from her.

Countess of Clare

Maud married Roger de Clare, Earl of Hertford, who was generally styled Earl of Clare. Roger confirmed her father’s gift to Savigny, and Maud made a grant to Stoke-by-Clare Priory^W for the souls of Roger, herself and their children, witnessed by Roger’s brother Richard. She also gave a mark of silver to the nuns of Godstow for the soul of the earl her husband. Roger died in 1173, and their son Richard succeeded him as earl.

Widowhood and second marriage

As a widow Maud confirmed earlier gifts to the monks of Eynsham Abbey^W, for the soul of her husband, Roger de Clare, Earl of Hertford, and for the souls of her ancestors. By 1176 the king had given Maud in marriage to William d’Aubigny, Earl of Arundel^W, who died on 24 December 1193.

Lines of descent

The lines meet again in Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506), whose parents James Berkeley (about 1394–1463) and Isabel Mowbray (died 1452) both descend from Maud; in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both do; and in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884) both do.

Notes

Sources

Maud’s parentage, her marriage to Roger, the gifts to Savigny, Stoke, Godstow and Eynsham, Roger’s death and her second marriage are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. VI (1926), HERTFORD, pp. 500–501, whose notes cite Stapleton’s Rotuli Scaccarii Normanniae, Round’s Calendar of Documents preserved in France, Dugdale’s Baronage, the Stoke Priory charters in the Cotton manuscripts, the Eynsham cartulary and the pipe roll of 22 Henry II (1175–76), in which the sheriff of Oxfordshire accounted for the land of the Countess of Clare “before the King gave her to William d’Aubigny”. Vol. I (1910), ARUNDEL, p. 236, gives William’s death and calls Maud “da. and h. of James de St. Hilaire du Harcouet, by Aveline, his wife”; vol. V (1926), ESSEX, p. 124, places the family’s name at Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët, in the district of Mortain, and notes that James was also called de Sancto Jacobo, from Saint-James-de-Beuvron, in the pipe roll of 31 Henry I. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), CLARE 1, p. 192, calls her the daughter and heiress of James de Saint Hilary, of Field Dalling, Norfolk, and the mother of Richard de Clare; CLARE 2, p. 194, says that her grandson Gilbert inherited the honor of St Hilary from his grandmother. No date of her death is recorded in these works.

Her other children

The Complete Peerage, vol. V, ESSEX, p. 124, makes Maud also the mother of Roger’s daughter Aveline, the wife of William de Munchanesy and of Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Essex; the family tree does not link Aveline to her. Richardson, MOWBRAY 1, p. 598, names a daughter of her second marriage, Agnes d’Aubigny, who married William de Mowbray.