♂Thomas Delamere

Thomas Delamere is said to have been a knight of Aldermaston in Berkshire, England, and the grandfather of Elizabeth Delamere, through whom the Delamere inheritance passed into the Forster family. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Delamere.

Sir Thomas’s son and heir was John Delamere, and John’s only heir was his daughter Elizabeth. She married George Forster, the eldest son of Humphrey Forster of Harpsden in Oxfordshire, and George was seated at Aldermaston, the home of her grandfather Sir Thomas. His family’s arms lived on in his descendants’ shield: when the heralds recorded the Forster arms at their visitation^W of Berkshire in 1566, the Delamere coat, two silver lions on red, one above the other, collared in blue, was quartered^W with Forster and Popham. Elizabeth and George’s eldest son, Humphrey, followed his father as Sir Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston.

Notes

The heralds’ pedigrees

Everything told of Sir Thomas here comes from two heralds’ pedigrees of his descendants’ families. The pedigree of the Forsters of Aldermaston in the 1566 heralds’ visitation of Berkshire, as printed by W. C. Metcalfe in 1885 (page 12), gives Sir George Forster’s wife as Elizabeth, “da. and sole heir to John” Delamere, “son and heir to Sir Thomas Delamere” of Aldermaston, knight. It gives no dates for Sir Thomas and names neither his wife nor any other child.

The Hampshire pedigree

The Hampshire visitations, as printed by the Harleian Society in 1913 (volume 64, pages 41–42), carry a Dabridgecourt pedigree that spells the name Delamare and draws a fuller family. It names him “Sr Thomas Delamare of Aldermarston in Com. Berks knt.” and shows him as the son of John Delamare and Avice, a daughter and co-heir of John Penris of Gower, carrying the Delamare line back through William and Raffe Delamare to a John Delamare, “lord of Oxwich & Portnor in Wales”. It does not name Sir Thomas’s wife. Besides his son John, it gives him five daughters: Anne, the wife of William Gawyn of Northington in Wiltshire; three daughters not named, the wives of William Butler, of Sir Thomas Wood, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (the printed chart adds the year 1500), and of a man named Riall; and Alice, the wife of Thomas Dabridgecourt of Stratfieldsaye in Hampshire. The chart calls Alice “d. & Coheire” of her father, which sits oddly beside the Berkshire pedigree’s John as son and heir, and it marries John to a daughter, not named, of Sir Nicholas Dabridgecourt of Stratfieldsaye. Neither visitation explains the difference.