♂Thomas de Valoines

Thomas de Valoines (died before 1 July 1299) was an English landholder at Shabbington in Buckinghamshire, whose manor passed through his only known child, his daughter Joan, to the de Grey family of Rotherfield. He was the twenty-first great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joan de Valoines (died 1312).

Land and family

Shabbington was held as two knights’ fees^W of the honor of Wallingford^W. Early in the thirteenth century the fees had belonged to Alan de Valognes and then, from 1210, to his brother and heir Robert; Thomas had probably succeeded to them before 1234. The records do not say how he was related to the two brothers.

His daughter Joan married Robert de Grey of Rotherfield Greys in Oxfordshire. Thomas gave the couple half the manor of Winterbourne in Berkshire in frank-marriage^W, the form in which a father endowed a daughter and her husband at their marriage, and Shabbington later came to Joan as his heir.

Death

Thomas died before 1 July 1299. On that day, and again in June 1300, his widow, also named Joan, was holding land in dower out of Joan de Grey’s inheritance. The records do not say whether she was his daughter’s mother.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Joan. One comes down through Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844); the other reaches Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825). The two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Shabbington and Winterbourne

The Victoria County History of Buckinghamshire (vol. 4, under Shabbington) traces the two fees from Alan de Valognes in the early thirteenth century to his brother and heir Robert in 1210, and states that “Thomas de Valognes had succeeded before 1234”, drawing on the Testa de Nevill^W; it names his heir as “his daughter Joan wife of Robert de Grey, who was holding in 1284”. The inquest after Joan de Grey’s death in 1312 found that Shabbington (“Schobyngton”) “descended to the said Joan after the death of Thomas de Valoignes her father”, and that she held a moiety of Winterbourne “for life in free marriage, because Thomas de Valoynes thereof enfeoffed the said Robert and Joan” (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 5, no. 398). The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, p. 144) quotes a plea of 1330 in which his great-grandson John de Grey of Rotherfield sued for land in Shabbington “which Thomas de Valoines gave to Robert de Grey and Joan his wife and the heirs of their bodies”.

His widow and his death

Final concords of 1 July 1299 and 25 June 1300 name “Joan de Valoygnes, who was the wife of Thomas de Valoygnes”, as holding “in dower of the inheritance of Joan de Grey”. They fix his death before the first of those dates, and they do not call the widow Joan de Grey’s mother. The county history has Joan de Grey already holding Shabbington in 1284, which may reflect either her father’s gift or his death by then.

One Thomas or two

Sixty-five years separate a succession before 1234 from a death before 1299, and his widow was still living in 1300. The sources do not say whether one Thomas held Shabbington through all those years, or a father and a son of the same name.