♂Thomas Fettiplace

Thomas Fettiplace (died about 1447) was a Berkshire gentleman who served Gilbert Talbot, Lord Talbot^W, as his steward, and who in 1433 was sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Before 1423 Thomas Fettiplace married Beatrice, the widow of the lord who had made him his steward. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son John Fettiplace (died 1464).

Life

On 17 September 1413 Lord Talbot appointed Thomas steward of his manor and hundred^W of Bampton in Oxfordshire. Lord Talbot died on 19 October 1419, and Beatrice, the widow Thomas married, is said to have been born in Portugal. Thomas and Beatrice had three sons: William Fettiplace, born about 1424, who became his mother’s heir; James Fettiplace; and John, the third son. In 1433, as “sir Thomas Fettiplace of Childrey”, he served as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

Death

Thomas probably died about 1447. Beatrice died on Christmas Day 1447, and their son William, then 24, was found to be her heir. Thomas and Beatrice were buried at East Shefford, in St Thomas’ Church^W, where their tomb bears effigies of the two of them.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son John, John’s son Richard Fettiplace, Richard’s daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s 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

His origins

No record names his parents. J. R. Planché, in his “Genealogical notice of the family of Fettiplace” (Journal of the British Archaeological Association, vol. 16, 1860, pp. 201-203), wrote: “In no pedigree do we find an indication of the branch from which he descended”. A herald’s manuscript at the College of Arms (Vincent MS 143) gives Thomas a brother, John of Wolverley, and Planché guessed at a Henry Fettiplace as his father, but no record bears that out. The 1623 Berkshire visitation pedigree (The Four Visitations of Berkshire, Harleian Society, vol. I, pp. 90-91) begins him as “Thomas Fettiplace de Shifford”, with no line above him.

His offices and marriage

Planché gives Lord Talbot’s appointment of Thomas as steward of the manor and hundred of Bampton, dated 17 September 1413, and his term as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in 1433. The Complete Peerage (1st ed., vol. 7, p. 360) calls him a man of East Shefford and steward of the manor, and says that Lord Talbot’s widow married him before 1423. An inquisition held at Wilton in 1448, quoted by Planché, found that “William Fettiplace was the son and heir of the said Beatrice, and was then twenty-four years of age”.

His death and burial

The Victoria County History of Berkshire (vol. 4, pp. 234-238) says that Sir Thomas was buried at East Shefford about 1447 and “left three sons, William, James and John”, and describes the tomb effigies of “Sir Thomas Fettiplace … and his wife Beatrice widow of Sir Gilbert Talbot”. No record of the date of his death is known; about 1447 is the history’s estimate.