♂Serlo de Grendon

Serlo de Grendon was a Derbyshire knight of the late twelfth century, lord of Bradley, whose marriage to Margaret, the daughter of Ralph FitzGeremund, brought him half the manor of Ockbrook and bound his family to the abbey of Dale. The canons of Dale remembered him as armis strenuus, divitiis potens, generis eminentia conspicuus: vigorous in arms, powerful in wealth and distinguished by the eminence of his birth. He was the twenty-fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Isolda de Grendon.

Lord of Bradley and Ockbrook

Serlo held the vill of Bradley, in Derbyshire, of Sewallis son of Fulcher, lord of Ettington in Warwickshire; Sewallis, and later Sewallis’s son Henry, confirmed Bradley to Serlo’s son William as the land his father had held.

Serlo married Margaret, the daughter of Ralph FitzGeremund, lord of half the vill of Ockbrook and of Alvaston, and received with her half the manor of Ockbrook in frank-marriage^W, a gift of land made with a bride to her husband and their heirs. Her brother William FitzRalph added the wood of Ockbrook called the Little Haye. William was the king’s sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire^W from 1168 to 1180, and from 1178 seneschal of Normandy^W; according to a historian of the county’s early landholders, Serlo acted as his deputy in the shire from 1177 to 1180.

Family

Serlo and Margaret had five sons and three daughters. William became a priest, lord of Ockbrook and the advocate^W, or lay protector, of the abbey of Dale, and he and his brother Serlo gave the canons land in Ockbrook for the souls of their parents and of their brothers Jordan and Fulcher, William’s grant naming “Serlo his father and … Margaret his mother”. The abbey’s chronicle names a son Bartholomew, who became a canon there. Though Margaret bore Serlo five sons, it was their three daughters, Johanna, Isolda and Agatha, to whom the inheritance ultimately descended. Isolda married Henry Brailsford, lord of Brailsford.

Margaret probably died before her husband, who married a second wife, Matilda, lady of the manor of Celston. By her Serlo had two more sons, Andrew and Ranulph, who became lord of Boleston, and the chronicle names another son, Robert, born to him by a concubine.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Isolda de Grendon and her son Henry Brailsford (died about 1260), and on through their descendants to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down 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 marriage and children

The chronicle of Dale Abbey written by Thomas de Musca, one of its canons, translated by Charles Kerry in Depedale, and the Chronicle of Thomas de Musca, Canon of Dale Abbey (1883), chapter VII, says that “the lord of Bradleye, by name Serlo de Grendon … received Margery, the daughter of the aforesaid Radulph, the son of Geremund, as his wife, and with her the half of the Manor of Okebroke in free dowry”, that by her he had three daughters, “Johanna, Isolda, and Agatha, to whom … the inheritance ultimately descended”, and five sons, Bartholomew, “who was afterwards canon with us”, William, the abbey’s advocate, Fulcher, Jordan and Serlo. It names his second wife Matilda, “the lady of the manor of Celston”, her sons “Andrew of Grendon, and Ranulph, the lord of Boleston”, and “Robert, by a concubine”. S. P. H. Statham, “Later Descendants of Domesday Holders of Land in Derbyshire”, Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, vol. 48 (1926), p. 62, quotes the Latin description of Serlo from the Dale texts printed in Dugdale’s Monasticon and adds that all the sons died without male heirs, so that “the main part of their mother’s inheritance went eventually to her daughters”.

The abbey’s chartulary, abstracted by J. C. Cox in the same Journal, vol. 24 (1902), pp. 87–88, gives William de Grendon’s grants for the souls of “Serlo his father and … Margaret his mother, and of Jordan and Fulcher his brothers, together with his body and that of Bertram his brother”, the younger Serlo’s for “Serlo and Margaret his father and mother”, and William FitzRalph’s grant to Serlo of the wood of Ockbrook (the Little Haye). The chartulary’s Bertram and the chronicle’s Bartholomew may be the same son; neither source says so. The family tree uses the chartulary’s names.

Bradley

The confirmations of Bradley are printed in Stemmata Shirleiana (1873), appendix XV, where Sewallis son of Fulcher grants to “Witto filio Serlonis de Grendon totam villam de Bradeleia quam pater ejus tenuit de me”, and appendix XXIX, where his son Henry confirms the lands “quas Serlo … tenuit de Sewall’ patre meo”.

The shrievalty

Statham (1926), p. 59, writes that William FitzRalph was sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire from 1168 to 1180, “Serlo de Grendon his brother-in-law, acting as his deputy from 1177 to 1180”, and that William became seneschal of Normandy in 1178. Yeatman’s extracts from the Pipe Roll of 24 Henry II call Serlo the sheriff’s son-in-law, explaining in a note that Serlo married the daughter of William fitz Ralf and citing the Dale chronicle; the chronicle itself names Margaret’s father as Ralph, which makes Serlo the sheriff’s brother-in-law, as Statham has it.