♂Walter Foliot

Walter Foliot (living in 1312) was an English landholder in Dorset who married the heiress Ada de Sanford and held with her the manors of Melbury Sampford in Dorset and Whiteford in Devon. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Joan Foliot (died 1348).

Marriage and lands

Walter’s parents are not known, and he is said to have been of Melbury Osmond, in Dorset. Ada was the sister and heir of Thomas de Sanford, who died in 1299, and by 1300–01 she had married Walter Foliot. The advowson^W of the church of Melbury Sampford, the right to name its priest, had been exercised by her mother, Hawise, in 1297; Ada exercised it in 1303, and she and Walter did so together on 6 March 1308.

In 1312–13 a final concord^W settled the manors of Melbury Sampford in Dorset and Whiteford in Devon on Walter and Ada for their lives, and after them on their daughter Joan and her husband, Nicholas de Percy, and the children Nicholas would have by her; failing those, the lands were to go to Ada’s own heirs. The records do not say when Walter died. Ada died in 1331, and her heir was her daughter Joan, by then the wife of John Mautravers; Joan’s first husband, Nicholas de Percy, had been killed in 1324.

Lines of descent

Through their daughter Joan Foliot and her daughter Joan de Percy, Walter Foliot and Ada de Sanford were ancestors of Thomas Dudley (1576–1653). Both lines run through Beatrice de Braose, the Shirleys, Bromes, Dentons, Purefoys and Thornes to Thomas Dudley 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 name and place

Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. 6 (1840), pp. 338–339, “Proofs of the Mautravers Pedigree”, calls his daughter Joan “daughter and heir of Sir Walter Foliot, of Melbury-Osmond, Dorset, by Alda, daughter of Sir Laurence Sampford, of Melbury-Sampford”. His knighthood and his place at Melbury Osmond rest on that account. F. N. Craig’s table in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 150 (July 1996), p. 324, shows him as “Walter Foliot liv 1312”.

An older pedigree of the Foliots of Melbury Osmond in John Hutchins’s History of Dorset (1774), vol. 2, p. 464, places a Walter Foliot of 1313 and a Roger Foliot who died in 1373 above a Sir Walter who married Alda Sampford, an order the dates make impossible, and this page does not follow it. Walter’s own parents are not known.

Marriage and the settlement

The Collectanea quotes Strangways’ records: “Alda, sister to Sir Thomas de Saundford, to Walter Foliot 29 Edw. I”, that is, in the twenty-ninth year of Edward I (1300–01). It also lists the presentations to Melbury Sampford church: by Hawise in 1297, by Alda in 1303, and by “Walter Foliot and Alda, 6 Mar. 1308”.

The final concord of 6 Edward II (1312–13), printed on p. 352 of the same volume, was made between Peter de Blunt and “Waltm Folyot & Adam uxem ejus” (Walter Foliot and Ada his wife) for the manors of “Melebury Samford” and “Whyteford”, with the remainder after Nicholas and Joan’s children to “rectis heredibus pdce Ade” (the right heirs of the said Ada).