♂Sir William de Cantilupe

William de Cantilupe^W (died about 1254) was an English knight who held Abergavenny, on the Welsh border, through his marriage to the heiress Eva de Braose. Their only son, George, was born there on Good Friday 1252, and William died about two years later; the boy would in time inherit lands that stretched from Wales to Devon and Yorkshire. He was the twenty-first great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Millicent de Cantilupe (died 1299).

Marriage

William was the son and heir of another William de Cantilupe, who is said to have served Henry III as his steward. In July 1238 his father, by one account, obtained the wardship and marriage of Eva de Braose, the right to bring up a young heiress and choose her husband, together with the custody of Abergavenny and the other lands that fell to her share. William de Cantilupe and Eva de Braose were married between 1238 and February 1248, and had a son, George, and two daughters, Millicent and Joan.

Through Eva, William came to hold the castle of Abergavenny, the borough of Totnes in Devon and other lands of the Braose inheritance. To these were joined his own family’s manors, among them Calne and Caleston in Wiltshire and Aston Cantelou in Warwickshire. Sir Adam de Gurdun and Sir Robert de Tregoz were knights of his household.

Death and heirs

His father died about the time George was born, and William followed about two years later. Twenty-one years on, when George proved his age^W to take up his inheritance, one witness remembered that the boy’s father had “died at Calveston 18 years ago”, most likely the family’s manor of Caleston, now Calstone, in Wiltshire. William is said to have been buried at Studley Priory^W in Warwickshire. Eva died, by one account, the following year.

George came of age in 1273 and died that same year without children. The inquest^W on his lands named his sister Millicent, the wife of Eudes la Zouche, and the young John de Hastings, son of his sister Joan, as his heirs. Among George’s lands was a small chapel at Totnes where two chaplains said mass “for the souls of the ancestors and successors of Sir William de Cantilupo and Eva his wife”. Bingley in Yorkshire, also among his lands, came to Millicent, who gave it to her daughter Ellen la Zouche.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Millicent de Cantilupe and her daughter Ellen la Zouche and, much further down, through Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). From Samuel one line comes down 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

Death and burial

The Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem (vol. 2, no. 17) prints the proof of age of his son George, taken before the king’s council at Westminster in 1273. Brother John, master of the hospital of St Mark at Billeswyk outside Bristol, said that “the said George’s father died at Calveston 18 years ago, and the said George was born three years before at Bergeveny”; the same inquisition lists the manor of “Caleston” in Wiltshire, with “the gardens of Calston”, among George’s lands. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 23) gives his death at Calstone, Wiltshire, on 25 September 1254 and his burial on 30 September at Studley Priory, Warwickshire. The first edition (vol. 1, p. 13) and J. Horsfall Turner’s Ancient Bingley (1897, p. 67) also give 1254, but the first edition’s vol. 6 (p. 204) gives “William de Cantilupe (d. 1256)”. The year 1254 is kept here.

Marriage and the Braose lands

The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 22) says Eva married William “after 25 July 1238 (when his father, William de C., obtained her wardship and marriage together with the custody of Abergavenny and the other lands falling to her share), and before 15 Feb. 1247/8”; the later date is that of the restitution of the Marshal and Braose lands to the co-heirs, among them “Eve, wife of William de Cauntelo” (2nd ed., vol. 6, under Hereford, citing the Patent Rolls). The first edition (vol. 6, p. 204) gives the marriage as 1248. In George’s inquisition the borough of Totnes is held “by reason of his pourparty of the lands &c. which were of William de Brewosa”, and the writ of extent for the Welsh lands goes to “the constable of the castle of Bergeveny”. Turner (p. 67) says William “married Eve dau. and co-h. of William Broase, lord of Brecknock and Abergavenny”.

His father

At the proof of age, Peter, prior of Henton, said he had been chaplain “to William de Cantilupo, grandfather of the said George”, and was busy with that William’s will when George was born, for he “died the year of George’s birth or in the preceding year”. Turner (p. 67) gives the elder William’s death as 1251 and calls him “steward to the king, like his father”; the Complete Peerage (1st ed., vol. 1, p. 13) says the younger William succeeded “his father in 1250”.

His household

Two witnesses at the proof of age drew on “Sir Adam de Gurdun and others who were of the household (familia) of William de Cantilupo the father of the said George”, and on “Sir Adam de Gurdun and Sir Robert de Tregoz and others of the said household”.

The name

The records of his time write him “de Cantilupo” in Latin and the family’s Warwickshire manor “Aston Cantelou”. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 23) calls him William de Cantelou and quotes Oswald Barron that “Cantelowe or Cantlow” was the usual English form.