♂Ralph Shirley

Ralph Shirley was an English knight of Lower Ettington in Warwickshire in the first half of the fifteenth century, the heir to a long quarrel over the Basset estates. He was the sixteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483). Through Beatrix he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Inheritance

Ralph was the son of Sir Hugh Shirley and Beatrice de Braose. His father was killed at the Battle of Shrewsbury^W in 1403, and Ralph succeeded him.

With the inheritance came a quarrel. The last Lord Basset of Drayton^W, Hugh’s uncle on his mother’s side, had settled his lands on Hugh on condition that he bear the Basset name and arms, and the Earl of Stafford contested the grant. The dispute outlived Hugh, and it is said to have ended only when Henry VI decided that Sir Ralph should keep the lands. They were estates in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire, among them Ratcliffe and Colston Basset.

Soldier and sheriff

Ralph is said to have fought under Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and to have served in the king’s later campaigns in France. In 1421–22 he was sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Marriages and death

Ralph married Joan Basset, daughter and heir of Thomas Basset of Brailsford in Derbyshire. They had a son, Ralph, who was living at Wiston in 1449, and a daughter, Beatrix, probably Joan’s child, who married John Brome of Baddesley Clinton. Ralph later took a second wife, Alice, daughter of Sir John Cokayne of Ashbourne. He is said to have died abroad, in France, at the age of fifty-two.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Beatrix Shirley, her daughter Isabel Brome, Isabel’s daughter Alice Denton, Alice’s son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) 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

His place in the family

Ralph is known from printed pedigrees and county histories, which agree on his family. William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, shows “Hugo de Shirley miles”, who died in the fourth year of Henry IV, married to “Beatrix soror & haeres Joh de Brews”, and their son “Rad. Shirley miles 3 H. 5.” (a knight in the third year of Henry V, 1415–16), married first to “Jocosa fil. & haeres Thomae Basset de Brailesford ar.” and secondly to “Alicia filia Joh. Cokain de Ashburn mil.” Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 402, gives “RALPH SHIRLEY, Knt., of Lower Ettington, Warwickshire, married JOAN BASSET”. A table in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (1996), p. 324, shows Hugh Shirley (died 1403) and Beatrice de Braose (died 1440) as his parents, and Ralph and Joan Basset as the parents of Ralph Shirley “of Wiston in 1449” and of Beatrix, wife of John Brome. The Brome pedigrees name Beatrix’s father only; as Ralph married twice, her mother is given here as Joan on the strength of that table.

The Basset lands

The entail by the last Lord Basset of Drayton and the dispute with the Earl of Stafford are given by G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (1912), p. 4, which says the Shirleys inherited “considerable estates in the counties of Nottingham, Leicester, and Warwick (touching which Sir Ralph Shirley had a memorable dispute with the Earl of Stafford)”, and by James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), who adds the condition of the Basset name and arms and Henry VI’s decision in Sir Ralph’s favor. Dugdale names Ratcliffe and Colston Basset among the lands Ralph kept.

Agincourt, the shrievalty and his death

Sir Bernard Burke’s Peerage (1869 edition) calls Ralph “one of the chief commanders under Henry V., at the battle of Agincourt” who “took a distinguished part in the subsequent French wars of the same monarch”. F. N. Craig, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 142 (1988), p. 243, also places him at Agincourt in 1415 and has him die in France aged 52. The Shirley pedigree in the heralds’ visitations of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905, pp. 5–6) makes him sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the ninth year of Henry V (1421–22) and says he “dyed beyond the seas”. The same pedigree calls his second wife “Alis d. to … Blunt”; Dugdale’s Alice, daughter of Sir John Cokayne, is followed here.