♂Nicholas Malemayns

Nicholas Malemayns (born about 1222) was an English landholder in Surrey and Sussex in the reign of Henry III. He came of age in 1243 after a wardship, and spent much of his adult life at law with John Gatesden over land at Ockley. He was the twenty-first great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Nicholas Malemayns (died 1292).

Wardship and coming of age

Nicholas was probably the son and heir of an older Nicholas Malemayns, who died in 1240 and left his heirs under age. In 1241 John de Plessey paid 100 marks for the custody of the land and heirs of Nicholas Malemayns, so the young heir’s lands were held by another man while he grew up. He was still a minor in 1242–43, when the heirs of Nicholas held land at Burton. In 1243 he was of age and served as a witness for John Gatesden, the man he would later meet again and again in the king’s courts.

Marriage and lawsuits

Before 1249 Nicholas married Agnes, the widow of William de Montague. That year she and Nicholas appear together in a Surrey fine, and in 1252 the two of them made a fine with Agnes’s daughter Isabel and her husband, Ralph de la Haye, over land at Pevensey in Sussex. Whether Agnes was the mother of his son is not known.

His dealings with John Gatesden ran for nearly twenty years. In 1249 they settled their claims by a formal agreement in the king’s court, recorded among the feet of fines^W, over land at Dorking and Ockley, and in 1253–54 they did so again over Ockley. In 1262 two suits were brought in the King’s Bench^W against John Gatesden over land in Ockley, one involving “Nicholas the son of Nicholas Malmains” and the other “Nicholas Malmains senior and Nicholas Malmains junior”. Nicholas and his son were therefore both alive and both concerned with Ockley that year. No later record of him is known, and the date of his death is not recorded.

Lines of descent

Both lines run from his son Nicholas through his grandson Nicholas Malemayns (1275–1349) and the grandson’s daughter Petronilla Malmains (died 1349) down to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). From Samuel they divide, one reaching Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and the other his wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

His birth and his father

F. N. Craig, “Maternal Ancestry of Governor Thomas Dudley: Hoo, St. Omer, Malmains, St. Leger, Fitzwarin and Andevill Lines”, New England Historical and Genealogical Register 140 (1986), pp. 222–223, numbers him Nicholas [II]. He reasons that “If Nicholas [II] was a minor in 1242-3 when the heirs of Nicholas [I] held land in Burton (Book of Fees 2:937) and of age in 1243 when he was a witness for John Gatesden, he may have been born in about 1222”; the birth year on this page is that estimate. Craig gives the father as Nicholas [I], who died in 1240 and whose widow was Beatrice, and adds that “the chronology opens the possibility that Nicholas [II] was the son not of Beatrice but of an earlier wife.” Neither parent is treated here as proven. Craig dates the custody to 1240; the Victoria County History of Surrey, vol. 3, under Ockley, gives the payment of 100 marks in 1241 by “John de Plessets” (Fine Roll, 25 Henry III).

His marriage

The fine of 1252 is in the Sussex Feet of Fines (Sussex Record Society, vol. 7, no. 523), as cited by Craig, who identifies Isabel as the daughter of Agnes by her first husband, William de Montague. The Surrey fine is in the Pedes Finium for Surrey (Surrey Archaeological Society, 1894), 33 Henry III, no. 385: “Agnes de Monte Acuto and Nicholas Malemeins” against William le Enfaunt and his wife Alice.

John Gatesden and his son

The fines with John de Gatesden are in the same Surrey volume: 33 Henry III, no. 379, over Dorking, Okeleg, Hamsted and Cumpton, and 38 Henry III, no. 421, over Ockele. This page takes them to be his, as the only grown Nicholas of the family at those dates. The suits of 1262 are cited by Craig from the Close Rolls of Henry III (vol. 12, p. 115); he concludes from them that the Nicholas who died in 1292 was this man’s son. This page follows Craig.