♀Petronilla Malmains

Petronilla Malmains (died before 16 October 1349) was an Englishwoman who married Thomas St. Omer of Mulbarton in Norfolk and Britford in Wiltshire, as his first wife, and bore his daughter Alice. When Alice proved her age in 1356, neighbours at Britford remembered Petronilla’s churching^W after the birth, held in the manor house of her father-in-law. She was the eighteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Alice St. Omer (born 1340).

Marriage and family

She is said to have been a daughter of Sir Nicholas Malemayns of Ockley in Surrey, probably by his wife Alice. Thomas St. Omer married Petronilla Malmains, written Pernell in the records of their day, and Thomas’s father, Sir William St. Omer, lord of Britford, is said to have settled land at Mulbarton on the couple. They had two daughters: Elizabeth, born about 1338, who died at about the age of ten, and Alice, born at Britford on 25 March 1340, in the manor of Thomas’s father.

Petronilla died before 16 October 1349, when an inquisition taken after the death of Sir Nicholas Malemayns named her daughters, not her, among his heirs. Sir Nicholas had died that May, and his lands were divided among her daughters, his daughter Beatrice and a third heir.

Alice later married Sir William Hoo, who rebuilt Mulbarton church and filled its windows with portraits of his wife’s family. The Norfolk historian Francis Blomefield^W recorded in 1769 that one of the north windows had until lately shown Thomas kneeling in armour, Petronilla kneeling behind him with the arms of St. Omer and Malmains, and Alice behind them both.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Alice, Alice’s daughter Margaret Hoo, Margaret’s daughter Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), Edith’s daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526), Alice Harcourt’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, Elizabeth’s daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’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

Her parentage

The records call her daughters “kinswomen” and heirs of Sir Nicholas Malemayns without naming her as his daughter: the proof of age of 1356 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 10, no. 336) heads them “kinswomen and two of the heirs of Nicholas de Malemaynes”, and the division of his Lincolnshire manor of Rothwell (vol. 9, no. 433) names “Elizabeth and Alice, daughters of Pernell de Sancto Omero, kinswoman of Nicholas”. The inquisitions of 1349 (vol. 9, no. 418) name only Beatrice, the wife of Sir Otes de Grandison, as his daughter. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, under Hoo) calls Petronilla “da. and coh. of Sir Nicholas Malmayns, of Ockley, Surrey”, and W. D. Cooper, “Notices of the Family of Hoo”, Sussex Archaeological Collections 8 (1856), p. 108, a coheiress of “Nicholas Lord de Malmaynes”; 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. 220–224, takes her as his daughter, while noting that the other heirs were most likely the children of Beatrice’s sisters.

Her mother is not named in any record. Sir Nicholas’s wife Alice appears with him in a royal grant of 1296 (Calendar of Charter Rolls, vol. 2, p. 464, as Craig cites it), and in 1468 the heirs of the Hoo family sued for the manor of Ockley as heirs of “Nicholas Malmayns and Alice” (Complete Peerage, vol. 6, under Hoo); the family tree takes Alice as Petronilla’s mother on that ground.

Her daughters

The proof of age of 1356 gives Alice’s birth at Britford “on the feast of the Annunciation, 14 Edward III”, says that her sister Elizabeth “died eight years ago” aged ten, and places the churching of “Pernell, wife of Thomas de Sancto Omero and mother of the said Alice” in the manor of “Sir William de Sancto Omero, father of the said Thomas, at Brutford”. The inquisitions of 1349, which call the girls “Elizabeth daughter of Thomas de Seyntomer and Pernell his wife” and her sister Alice, give their ages as eight and seven, about three years younger, and still name Elizabeth among the heirs; the family tree follows the proof of age. Craig (p. 220) says that Thomas’s father gave land at Mulbarton to Thomas and Pernell (Calendar of Fine Rolls, vol. 7, p. 312).

Mulbarton church

The rebuilding of the church and the windows are from Cooper, pp. 108–109, who takes the windows from Blomefield’s History of Norfolk, vol. 3, p. 51; Blomefield describes the kneeling lady only as Thomas’s wife, with the arms of St. Omer and Malmains. Sir Nicholas’s death in May 1349 is from the inquisitions of that year, whose juries differ on the day: 12 May in Sussex, 4 May in Hampshire and 10 May in Kent.