♂Roger de Lacy

Roger de Lacy was a Yorkshire baron, lord of Pontefract and hereditary Constable of Chester^W. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by four separate lines of descent, all through his son John de Lacy (died 1240): by three of them he was her twenty-fourth great-grandfather, and by the fourth her twenty-fifth.

Life

Roger was born Roger Fitz John, the son of John, Constable of Chester. His father’s mother, Aubreye, inherited the estates of her cousin Robert de Lacy, who died without children in 1193, and in 1194 she gave the honor of Pontefract^W to her grandson Roger, who thereupon took the name of Lacy. His seals show that he bore the arms of Eustace FitzJohn, quartered gold and red with a black bend, marked with a label for descent from a younger son, the same coat his son later used.

He married a woman named Maud. Her family is not certain: one account of the peerage calls her Maud de Clare. Their son and heir, John, was born about 1192 and came into his inheritance as Constable of Chester in July 1213. Roger was buried at Stanlaw Abbey^W, and when John died in 1240 he was laid near his father in the monks’ choir.

Lines of descent

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

Roger’s parentage, his grandmother Aubreye’s inheritance, the gift of Pontefract in 1194 and his change of name are from G. E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. VII (1929), LINCOLN, p. 676, note; his arms and seals, and John’s burial near his father at Stanlaw, are from p. 679. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), LACY 1, p. 479, names him “Roger Fitz John (de Lacy), of Pontefract, Yorkshire, hereditary Constable of Chester” and gives John as his son and heir “by his wife, Maud,” born about 1192. John’s livery of his inheritance in July 1213 is from the Complete Peerage, p. 676. Both are printed accounts of the medieval nobility.

His wife

Richardson gives Roger’s wife only as Maud. The Complete Peerage calls her Maud de Clare, without naming her parents.