♂Robert de Quincy

Robert de Quincy (died 1217) was an English nobleman, the eldest son and heir apparent of Saher de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, and the husband of Hawise of Chester, later Countess of Lincoln. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by four separate lines of descent, all through his daughter Margaret de Quincy (died 1266): by three of them he was her twenty-fourth great-grandfather, and by the fourth her twenty-fifth.

Marriage and death

Robert is said to have been the eldest of the five sons of Saher de Quincy and Margaret de Beaumont. He married Hawise of Chester^W, a sister of Ranulph, Earl of Chester. For her marriage portion she had ten librates of land (land worth ten pounds a year) in Waddington, land in Sibsey, and the service of three fees in Cabourn, all in Lincolnshire. They had one daughter, Margaret de Quincy, who became his heir.

Robert died in London in 1217 and was buried in the church of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell^W. Between 1217 and 1219 his widow granted a rent to the brethren of the Hospital of Jerusalem in England to found a chantry^W in their house at Clerkenwell for his soul.

Because Robert died before his father, the earldom of Winchester passed in 1219 to his younger brother Roger. No claim to it was ever made on Margaret’s behalf; through her mother she came instead to the earldom of Lincoln.

Lines of descent

All four lines run through Margaret de Quincy. They meet again in Maurice Berkeley (about 1435–1506), whose parents James Berkeley (about 1394–1463) and Isabel Mowbray (died 1452) both descend from Robert and Hawise; 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

Robert’s place as Saher’s son and heir apparent, his marriage, his daughter, his death and burial, Hawise’s marriage portion and her grant for the chantry are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), QUINCY 1, p. 684, with his daughter’s marriage at LACY 1, p. 479. The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. VII (1929), LINCOLN, p. 676, also gives the marriage and his death in London in 1217, and notes that Ranulph gave Hawise the land in Sibsey for her marriage portion. That no claim to the earldom of Winchester was made for Margaret is from the Complete Peerage, 1st ed., vol. VIII (1898), WINCHESTER, p. 169, note e. No birth date is known.

Which Robert

Richardson cites the Victoria County History of Cambridgeshire, vol. 5 (1973), for the point that Hawise’s husband was Robert the son of Saher, not an otherwise unknown younger brother of Saher of the same name. The Complete Peerage (1st ed., vol. VIII, p. 169, note e) mentions a story told by some earlier writers, that Robert went with his father to the Holy Land and came home to find his inheritance seized by a younger brother; it rejects the story, holding it certain that Robert died in his father’s lifetime, in 1217.