♂Ralph Shirley

Ralph Shirley (died 1342) was an English knight of Lower Ettington in Warwickshire in the reigns of Edward II and Edward III, on whom and his wife, Margaret de Waldeshef, the Shirley manors of Ettington and Shirley were settled in 1316. He was the nineteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Shirley (died before 1362).

Family and inheritance

Ralph was the son of James Shirley, a son of the elder Sir Ralph de Shirley, lord of Ettington. In 1316 the elder Sir Ralph settled Ettington on himself for life, with remainder “to Ralph son of James de Shirley and Margaret daughter of Walter Waldeshef and their issue”. By a fine of 13 October that year he also acknowledged that the manor of Shirley in Derbyshire belonged to Walter Waldeshef, Margaret’s father, and was to pass after Walter’s death to Ralph and Margaret. The settlements were most likely made for Ralph’s marriage to Margaret.

The elder Sir Ralph is said to have died in 1326, and under the settlement Ettington then came to the younger Ralph. He had been knighted by 1336, when he granted a lease as “Ralph de Shirleye, knight”.

Later life and death

In May 1341 Sir Ralph was one of the witnesses sworn at Warwick at the proof of age^W of Laurence de Hastings^W, the hearing by which an heir showed that he had come of age and could take up his lands. He probably died in 1342. Their son was most likely Sir Thomas Shirley, who followed his father at Ettington and died before 1362.

In the remains of the old parish church of Holy Trinity at Ettington Park, the oldest of the Shirley monuments is a pair of stone effigies of a knight in chain mail and his lady, traditionally named as Sir Ralph de Shirley and his wife Margaret de Waldeshef. The year given with the knight, 1327, is close to the elder Sir Ralph’s death, so which Ralph the figure shows is uncertain.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas Shirley, Thomas’s son Hugh Shirley (died 1403), Hugh’s son Ralph Shirley and Ralph’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from her through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his 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 parentage

The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 5, 1949, pp. 77–84, Ettington) makes the younger Ralph the grandson of the elder Sir Ralph de Shirley, through a son James who, it suggests, had most likely died young and was otherwise unrecorded. James is in fact on record: a statute-merchant certificate taken on 4 May 1311 (The National Archives, C 241/79/46) names “James, the son of Ralph de Shirley, knight” as owing £100 to his father, and a Berkeley Castle deed of 3 January 1314, made at London, has “James son of Ralf of Shirley” among the witnesses. The 1316 settlement of Ettington is given in the Victoria County History, p. 79; the fine for Shirley is among the Shirley deeds at the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland (26D53/340 and 341).

Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873), pp. 21–22, made the younger Ralph “probably … a son by a former marriage” of the elder, which the 1316 “son of James” rules out. The Shirley Association’s website instead makes him a younger son of Sir James de Shirley, the elder Ralph’s father, by a second wife; he would then be the elder Ralph’s half-brother of the same name, born between 1278 and 1280, and the 1316 settlement would pass over the elder Ralph’s own son James, alive in 1311 and 1314. This page follows the Victoria County History.

His age in 1341

The proof of age of Laurence de Hastings was taken at Warwick in May 1341 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 8, no. 337), where he appears as “Ralph de Schyrle, knight, aged 60 years”. The witnesses’ ages at such hearings were given in round numbers (the next man is “aged 50”), and sixty would put his birth about 1281, early for a grandson of the elder Sir Ralph. It is not taken as his birth year here.

His death and Dugdale’s pedigree

The year 1342 comes from the Victoria County History, which has the elder Sir Ralph die in 1326 and the younger in 1342, when his son Sir Thomas succeeded him. William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, lists him as “Rad de Shirley 4 E. 3.” (1330–31), the son of a Ralph of 7 Edward I, but gives Margaret de Waldeshef to that earlier Ralph and has one generation fewer than the Victoria County History. Dugdale has Sir Thomas “defunctus 36 E. 3.”, dead before the thirty-sixth year of Edward III began on 25 January 1362, and this page follows him there; the Victoria County History and Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry have Thomas die in 1362.

The effigies

The Victoria County History describes the monument in the south transept of the old church as “the recumbent effigies of Sir Ralph de Shirley 1327 and Margaret (de Waldeshief) his wife”. The knight is much damaged, with the right arm and the legs below the knees missing; the lady’s head rests on a cushion held by angels. The year 1327 points to the elder Sir Ralph, but the lady’s name points to the younger Ralph’s wife.