♂Walter de Lacy

Walter de Lacy (died early 1241) was an Anglo-Norman baron, lord of Weobley in Herefordshire and Lord of Meath^W in Ireland. Between 1232 and 1240 he gave the manors of Britford in Wiltshire and Yarkhill in Herefordshire to Ralph de Tony in frank-marriage^W with his daughter Parnel, and pledged that if he could not make the gift good, he would make it up from his lands in England or, failing those, from his castle of Trim^W in Ireland. He was an ancestor of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by three separate lines of descent, all through his daughter Parnel de Lacy: her twenty-second great-grandfather by one line and her twenty-third great-grandfather by the other two.

Lord of Weobley and Meath

Walter is said to have been the elder son of Hugh de Lacy, who died in 1186, and of Rose de Monmouth, and he followed his father as the sixth Baron Lacy and the second Lord of Meath. Before November 1200 he married Margaret Braose, a daughter of William de Braose^W.

Parnel’s marriage gift was made on set terms. Britford and Yarkhill were to pass to Ralph and his heirs by Parnel, free of every service but the king’s, while Walter kept for himself the services owed by the knights and free tenants of his barony of Weobley. If Parnel died without children, the manors were to come back to Walter and his heirs. Among the witnesses to the charter were John de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, and William Longespey.

His heirs

Walter’s son and heir, Gilbert de Lacy of Ewyas Lacy, married Isabel le Bigod and died in his father’s lifetime, in the second half of 1230; he was buried at Llanthony Priory. Gilbert’s only son, another Walter, died between 1238 and 1241 without children. So when Walter died early in 1241, his lands went to Gilbert’s two daughters, Margery and Maud. Margery’s half of the barony of Weobley took in the castles and half the manors of Weobley and Ewyas Lacy and the borough of Ludlow, and in 1252 Maud and her husband, Geoffrey, were granted the liberties in Meath that her grandfather had held. Besides Gilbert and Parnel, Walter had two more daughters, Egidia, who married Richard de Burgh, and Katherine.

Lines of descent

All three lines run through Parnel de Lacy and come down on the father’s side of Nancy Jane Blanchard, through her father, Kenneth Blanchard (1897–1975). They meet again in Wesley Blanchard (1844–1908), whose parents, Joseph Knapp Blanchard (1820–1885) and Elizabeth Trueworthy Blanchard (1825–1884), both descended from Walter, and in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents, Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825), both descended from him too.

Notes

Sources

Walter’s parentage, his titles as sixth Baron Lacy and second Lord of Meath, his marriage before November 1200 to Margaret, daughter of William de Braose, and his death “early in 1241, apparently before 24 Feb.” are from C. L. Kingsford’s article “Lacy, Walter de (d. 1241)” in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 31 (1892), which also names his children Egidia (wife of Richard de Burgh), Katherine and Gilbert. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), calls him Baron of Weobley (p. 824) and gives Gilbert’s marriage to Isabel le Bigod, the death of Gilbert’s son Walter between 15 May 1238 and 1241 without issue, and Margery’s share of the inheritance (pp. 849–850). Gilbert’s death in 1230 and his burial at Llanthony, and the grant of 1252 to Maud and Geoffrey, are from the Complete Peerage, 2nd ed., vol. 5; the Dictionary of National Biography puts Gilbert’s death in 1234.

The charter for Parnel

The gift of Britford and Yarkhill to Ralph de Tony “in frank marriage with Parnel his daughter” is no. 999 in J. L. Kirby, ed., The Hungerford Cartulary, Part Two (Wiltshire Record Society 60), dated by the editor to between 1232 and 1240. If Walter could not warrant the manors, he would give “a reasonable exchange of his lands in England, or failing that of his lands in Ireland, of the castle of Trim.” A plea of 1281 in the same cartulary repeats that Walter gave the manors to Ralph and Parnel, “Walter’s daughter, in frank marriage”. The Dictionary of National Biography does not name Parnel among Walter’s children; Richardson’s Tony chapter (p. 824) and the charter both name her as his daughter.

The year of his death

Richardson makes Margery co-heiress to her grandfather “in 1240”, against the Dictionary of National Biography’s early 1241. In Walter’s time the year was reckoned from 25 March, so a death in January or February 1241 fell in 1240 as the year was then written.