♂Sayer de Aldham

Sayer de Aldham was the earliest known ancestor of the Aldham family, which held land at Aldham in Kent in the thirteenth century. When his great-grandson Francis de Aldham died in or before February 1327 with no heir of his own, both men who claimed the family’s lands traced their right back to Sayer, one through each of his sons Thomas and Robert. He was the twenty-second great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas de Aldham (died 1275).

Family

Sayer is named at the head of the pedigree written on the back of the inquisitions post mortem^W taken after Francis’s death, and it follows two lines from him. His son Thomas, a knight, married Isabel, the widow of Ralph de la Haye; their son Baldwin was Francis’s father, and their daughter Joan married John Saint Clair. His other son, Robert, began the rival line, which came down through Denise de Aldham and Ralph to John de Lynam. No record names Sayer’s wife.

The jurors found Joan’s son, John Saint Clair (1301–1335), “aged 26 years on the feast of the Purification last past”, to be Francis’s next heir, and the Aldham lands passed down Thomas’s line.

A lawsuit of 1201

Sayer was probably the “Saer de Audeham” who, in the Michaelmas term of 1201, sued Walter de Benetestede in the king’s court^W over a knight’s fee^W in “Biddlesdon, Essex”. The suit ended because Walter “reddidit se religioni”, had given himself up to the religious life, and Sayer “left Court without a day”, with no date set for the case to come back. A man who took religious vows was treated in English law as dead to the world, a rule known as civil death^W.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas, Thomas’s daughter Joan, her son John Saint Clair and the Saint Clairs down to Edith Saint Clair (born about 1423), and from Edith through five generations of daughters to Susanna Thorne, the mother of Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. From Thomas Dudley’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683), one line 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

The 1327 pedigree

The pedigree is endorsed on the inquisitions taken after the death of Francis de Aldham (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 7, Edward III, no. 5; writ of 12 February 1327): “Sayer (had issue) Thomas de Aldeham, who married Isabel and had issue three children, viz.-Baldwin (who had issue) Francis, deceased without heir of himself; William, similarly deceased; and Joan, who married John Seyncler (and had issue) John, who now claims.” Ward, writing on the de Aldehams in Archaeologia Cantiana vol. 40 (1928), gives the endorsement as beginning “Stirps Sayerus”, with Robert’s line running to Dionysia, Ralph and John de Lynam. The pedigree was drawn up to set out the claims to the inheritance in 1327, so it names only the two sons whose lines then had claimants; Sayer may have had other children.

The lawsuit of 1201

W. R. Riddell, in his collected Essays and addresses (1911–35), gives the case from the Curia Regis rolls: “In M. T., 3 Jo., (1201), Saer de Audeham left Court without a day because Walter de Benetestede whom he had impleaded concerning a military fee in Biddlesdon, Essex, ‘reddidit se religioni’”. R. Griffin, in Kentish Items: Wrotham (1915), says Sayer is “aliunde known to have been living in 1201”. The identification of the man in the 1201 suit with the Sayer of the 1327 pedigree rests on these two later writers.

His parents

No record names Sayer’s parents.

His name

The pedigree writes Sayer, and Riddell’s note Saer. The family name is written Aldham, Aldeham and Audeham.