♂Thomas Shirley

Thomas Shirley (died before 1362) was an English knight of Lower Ettington in Warwickshire in the reign of Edward III, whose son by Isabel de Meynell was left the estates of the last Lord Basset of Drayton. He was the eighteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Hugh Shirley (died 1403).

Ettington

Thomas was most likely the son of Sir Ralph Shirley, who died in 1342, and of Margaret de Waldeshef, and he followed his father as lord of Ettington. He is said to have sat in Parliament as a knight of the shire^W for Warwickshire in 1340–41. Later accounts of the family remembered him as “the great founder of the family of Shirley, famous in his time for his valour, and for the many services … rendered to the Kings of England, against the French.”

Marriage

Thomas Shirley married Isabel de Meynell, daughter of Sir Hugh de Meynell of Langley Meynell in Derbyshire and his second wife, Alice de Audley. Their son was Hugh Shirley. Thomas died before 1362, and Isabel married twice more: Sir John de Wodhull, who died in 1367, and, by a licence dated 2 May 1369, Sir Gerard Braybrooke.

The marriage shaped the family’s fortunes long after Thomas’s death. Isabel’s mother had first been the wife of Ralph Basset of Drayton, the heir of Lord Basset^W. In 1389–90 Isabel’s half-brother, Ralph, the last Lord Basset of Drayton, settled his lands on her son Hugh, and through them the Shirleys came into large estates in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Hugh Shirley, Hugh’s son Ralph Shirley and Ralph’s daughter Beatrix Shirley (died 1483), and from her through the Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and his 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 parents

The Victoria County History of Warwickshire (vol. 5, 1949, pp. 77–84, Ettington) traces the manor from Sir James Shirley to his son Sir Ralph, who died in 1326, and then to a younger Sir Ralph, the elder’s grandson through an otherwise unrecorded James. A settlement of 1316 gave a remainder “to Ralph son of James de Shirley and Margaret daughter of Walter Waldeshef and their issue”. The younger Ralph died in 1342 and was followed by Sir Thomas, who died in 1362. This page follows that account. Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (31st ed., 1869), under Ferrers, and Stemmata Shirleiana (2nd ed., 1873) instead make Thomas the son of a Sir Ralph who married Margaret, daughter of Walter de Waldeshief, and died in 1327.

His death

William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656), p. 466, gives “Thomas de Shirley, miles, defunctus 36 E. 3.” and speaks of “his death, which happned before the 36 of E. 3.” The thirty-sixth year of Edward III began on 25 January 1362, so the date is given here as before 1362. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 378, calls Isabel the widow of “Thomas de Shirley, Knt. (died 1362)”, and the Victoria County History also has him die in 1362.

Parliament and “the great founder”

Both come from Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage (1869), under Ferrers: “Sir Thomas Shirley, Knt., M.P. for the co. Warwick, in the 14th year of Edward III. This Sir Thomas is said to be ‘the great founder of the family of Shirley, famous in his time for his valour, and for the many services, &c., rendered to the Kings of England, against the French.’” The fourteenth year of Edward III ran from January 1340 to January 1341.

His wife

Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, pp. 378 and 402, gives “ISABEL DE MEYNELL, married THOMAS DE SHIRLEY, Knt., of Lower Ettington, Warwickshire”, the daughter of Hugh de Meynell of Langley Meynell by his second wife, Alice de Audley. Dugdale and Burke had made her a Basset: Dugdale “Isabella filia Rad. Domini Basset”, Burke a granddaughter of Ralph, Lord Basset of Drayton. Her own page sets out the question. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 2, 1912, p. 4) records that the last Lord Basset “devised all his estates to his nephew (“mon neveu”), Hugh Shirley, and the heirs male of his body”.