♂Thomas Rody

Thomas Rody was a man of Warwick in the late fourteenth century who held land at Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, and whose daughter and heiress, Joane, married John Brome of Warwick. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joane Rody. Through her he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

Family

Thomas was a son of William Rody of Warwick, who acquired a house at Baddesley Clinton in October 1360. The next year William handed it to a chaplain, Walter Andreu, and in September 1369 Andreu settled it on William’s son William and his heirs. The deed set out who would take the house if that line failed: first William’s brother John, then their sister Margery, and last of all Thomas. William and John are said to have died without children, so the Rody property at Baddesley Clinton came down through Thomas.

Land at Baddesley Clinton

In April 1383 Thomas was one of five men to whom lands in Alscot, Ettington, Pillerton Hersey, Claverdon, Baddesley Clinton and Ansley were released. In April 1390 he gave up his own claim to a tenement in Baddesley Clinton, once held by Richard de le Lee, in favor of John Colyns of Baddesley Clinton and Edith his wife.

His daughter Joane, as his heiress, brought the family’s land at Baddesley Clinton to her husband, John Brome, who sat in Parliament for the borough of Warwick in 1406 and was holding the tenements that had been William Rody’s by 6 December 1434. Their son John Brome later became lord of the manor of Baddesley Clinton. The records do not give the date of Thomas’s death, or the name of his wife.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Joane Rody, her son John Brome, John’s daughter Isabel Brome, Isabel’s daughter Alice Denton, Alice’s son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) 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

The Baddesley Clinton deeds

The deeds of 1360, 1361, 1369, 1383 and 1390 survive among the papers of the Ferrers family of Baddesley Clinton at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon. The 1360 grant is made to “William le Rodye of Warr’ son and heir of the late John le Rodye”. The 1369 settlement on William’s son William is an entail^W, with the remainders “first to John brother of the said William … secondly to Margery sister of the said John … thirdly to Thomas brother of the said Margery and his heirs”. The 1383 deed names Thomas as “Thomas Rodye of Warrewyk’” and the 1390 release as “Thomas Rody of Warrewych’”. His fellow grantees in 1383 were William Hopkyns, Robert Waldene, Richard Martyn and William Clerc.

His daughter and heiress

That the land passed through Thomas to Joane rests on later compilations. William Dugdale^W’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656, p. 710) names her “Johanna filia & haeres Thomae Rody de Badsley-Clinton”, and the Warwickshire heraldic visitation^W of 1619 (Harleian Society vol. 12, p. 97) makes her the daughter and heir of Thomas Rody of Baddesley. James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), p. 91, following Henry Norris’s history of Baddesley Clinton (1897), says that Thomas’s brothers William and John both died without children. Hawes lists William Rody’s children as William, John, Thomas and Margery, which agrees with the 1369 deed in making Margery Thomas’s sister. John Brome’s holding of 6 December 1434 is from a court roll quoted by Norris.

In 1435 a William Rody of Warwick conveyed the same house at Baddesley Clinton to John Brome of Warwick, and John Rody, his son and heir, released his claim to it. The deeds do not say how this William was related to Thomas, and they do not fit easily with the statement that Thomas’s brother William died without children.

His wife

No record names Thomas’s wife. Norris mentions an Alice de Woodlow, “whose first husband was Thomas Ruding or Rody”, but Dugdale’s account of Woodlow names her first husband as Thomas Ruding, with a son William Ruding of his own, and she was still living as a widow in 1448. Norris’s “or Rody” joins two different men, and Alice is not taken to be Joane’s mother.