♂Thomas Basset

Thomas Basset was an English gentleman of Brailsford in Derbyshire in the later fourteenth century. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joan Basset. Through Joan he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Family

Thomas is said to have been a younger son of Sir John Basset of Cheadle in Staffordshire. Sir John’s heir was Ralph, his son by his first wife. Thomas was the son of the second wife, Joan Brailsford, daughter and heir of Sir Henry Brailsford, whose forebears had been lords of the manor of Brailsford for several generations. As his mother’s heir, Thomas took the Brailsford inheritance, while Cheadle went to his elder half-brother Ralph and Ralph’s descendants, and he was known as Thomas Basset of Brailsford.

Thomas Basset married Margaret Mering, said to have been the daughter of William Mering. Their daughter, Joan Basset, was her father’s heir and became the first wife of Sir Ralph Shirley of Lower Ettington in Warwickshire. The records do not give the dates of their births, their marriage or their deaths.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Joan Basset and her daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483). One comes down through Governor Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) 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 parentage and his daughter

William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, names Sir Ralph Shirley’s first wife in Latin as “Jocosa fil. & haeres Thomae Basset de Brailesford ar.” - Jocosa, daughter and heir of Thomas Basset of Brailsford, esquire; “ar.” stands for armiger^W, a man entitled to bear arms. English pedigrees call her Joan.

F. N. Craig, in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 142 (1988), p. 243, makes Joan the daughter and heir of Thomas Basset of Brailsford by Margaret, daughter of William Mering, and Thomas the younger son of Sir John Basset of Cheadle by his second wife, Joan, daughter and heir of Sir Henry Brailsford. For the Brailsford descent Craig refers to an article by Statham (1938), which traces Sir Henry’s line back to Aelfwine, a landholder of 1086.

The Shirley pedigree in the heralds’ visitations^W of Sussex (Harleian Society vol. 53, 1905, pp. 5–6) agrees. It sets out the Brailsfords as lords of the manor of “Brailleford in Darbyshire”, makes Joan Brailsford the second wife of “Sr Jo Bassett of Chedle in com. Stafford Knight”, gives the first wife’s son as “Raufe Bassett of Chedley son & heire”, and calls Thomas “heire to his mother”.

These are all compiled pedigrees, and none of them gives a date for Thomas. His era follows from his daughter’s marriage: her husband, Sir Ralph Shirley, succeeded his father, who was killed in 1403.

Thomas Basset of Blore

Some online family trees call him “Thomas Basset of Blore” in Staffordshire and give him dates of 1349–1390, without a source. In the Sussex pedigree Blore belonged to the elder line: Ralph Basset’s son was William of Cheadle, Blore, Crondon and Langley. The name appears to merge that line with Thomas of Brailsford, and those dates are not used here.