♂Sewallis Shirley

Sewallis Shirley (died before 1255) was an English knight and lord of Ettington in Warwickshire in the reign of Henry III. He was the twenty-third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son James Shirley (died about 1278).

Life

Sewallis was the son and heir of Henry Shirley, lord of Ettington, who probably died in 1220. The family is said to have held Ettington since 1086, when a man named Saswalo held it at the time of the Domesday survey. Henry had founded a chantry^W of St Nicholas at Ettington, giving its priest the tithe of the toll of his mill there, and Sewallis is said to have confirmed his father’s gift in the 1240s. In 1242 he held Ettington as one knight’s fee^W of Lord Ferrers, and about 1252 he was entered in the Book of Fees^W, the crown’s record of who held land by knight service.

About 1247 his son James married Agnes de Wauton, and by a fine made that year Sewallis settled the manor of Shirley, in Derbyshire, on James to provide Agnes’s dower, with Ettington to come to James after him. Sewallis also had a daughter, Elizabeth. The name of his wife is uncertain. He died before 1255, and James succeeded him as lord of Ettington.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son James and the Shirleys of Ettington down to 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

Names and records

In his own day he was called Sewallis de Ettington (de Etendon) as well as de Shirley. In the fine of 1247 (31 Henry III), printed in Evelyn Philip Shirley’s Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873), he is “Sewall fil. Henr.”, and the fine settles Shirley on his son James to dower James’s wife Agnes de Wauton, with Ettington to remain to James after his death. The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 5, 1949, pp. 78–79) gives the same settlement and has him holding one knight’s fee in Ettington of Lord Ferrers in 1242. He is named in the Testa de Nevill (the Book of Fees) in 36 Henry III (1251–52). Stemmata Shirleiana says that he died before the thirty-ninth year of Henry III (1254–55); James W. Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), gives “before 1259-60” and says that Sewall confirmed his father’s gift to the chantry in the early 1240s.

The generations above him

Stemmata Shirleiana makes him the son and heir of Henry, lord of Ettington in 1205–06, the founder of the chantry of St Nicholas, whose charter (“ego Henricus filius Sewalli”) prays for his wife and children without naming them. It gives Henry’s death as 1220 on the authority of Sir Thomas Shirley. The Victoria County History counts fewer generations: Saswalo in 1086, Fulcher (died about 1105), Sewallis (died about 1129), Henry (died about 1165) and then “a third Sewallis”, the man of 1242 and 1247. The two accounts differ on how many Henrys and Sewallises came between; this page follows Stemmata Shirleiana.

His wife

Stemmata Shirleiana and Dugdale’s pedigree marry him to Isabel, daughter and coheir of Robert Meysnyl of Dalby and widow of John de Neville, and Hawes repeats it. But a fine of 1 John (1199), made by Philip de Ulcote for Joan, “the sister of the wife of Sewall son of Henry”, shows that a Sewall son of Henry was already married by then. A woman married by 1199 fits an earlier Sewallis better than the father of a man who married in 1247, so she is not given here as James’s mother, and the name of Sewallis’s wife is left open.