♂Sir William de Meynell

William de Meynell (born before 1255) was a Derbyshire knight, the lord of Yeaveley and the son and heir of Philippa Savage, through whom the Meynells held half of Tissington in Derbyshire and half of Kingsnewton in Warwickshire. He was the twenty-first great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Hugh de Meynell (died 1333).

Life

William was the son of Philippa Savage and probably of her husband, Sir Hugh de Meynell. When his mother’s brother William le Savage died in 1259, his lands were divided between two heirs, Philippa and her nephew Thomas de Ednesouere. Philippa’s share included half of Tissington and half of Kingsnewton, with half the right to name the priest of Kingsnewton church. She died in May 1285, and the inquisition post mortem^W into her lands found her next heir to be “Sir William de Megnill, knight, her son, aged 30 and more”.

William was also lord of Yeaveley, in Derbyshire, and a charter of Edward I’s reign names him “William de Meygnill, Dominus de Yveleye”. He held it of Edmund Crouchback^W, the king’s brother, and when Edmund’s lands were surveyed after his death, in 1297, William was found to hold Yeaveley of him for half a knight’s fee^W. His wife is not named in any record, and when he died is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through Hugh de Meynell (died 1333), most likely his son, Hugh’s son Hugh de Meynell (1302–1363), his daughter Isabel de Meynell (died 1393), her son Hugh Shirley (died 1403), his 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 mother’s inheritance

The Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 1 (1904), no. 453, William le Suvage alias le Savage, writ 2 October, 43 Henry III (1259): “Thomas de Ednessouere, son of Thomas and Lucy de Ednesouere his sister, and Philippa, wife of Sir Hugh de Meinyl, his sister, both aged 30 and more, are his heirs”. The lands included Tissington (Derbyshire) and Newton (Warwickshire). Vol. 2 (1906), no. 561, Philippa de Meignyll alias de Menill, writ 12 May, 13 Edward I: a moiety of Tissington and a moiety of Kings Newton with a moiety of the advowson; she died on the “Wednesday after St. John ante Portam Latinam, 13 Edw. I”; “Sir William de Megnill, knight, her son, aged 30 and more, is her next heir”. His age at that inquest is the only evidence for his birth, which it places before 1255. The inquest names him as heir only and does not list her other children.

His father

No record names William’s father. Philippa was the wife of Sir Hugh de Meinyl in 1259, when William was already born, and her son and heir bore her husband’s surname. Lysons (below) places Hugh at Langley Meynell in 1251, married to “the heiress of Edensor”.

His son Hugh

No record names the father of Hugh de Meynell who died in 1333. The link rests on the lands. The half of Kingsnewton with its half advowson that Philippa held in 1285 was held by Hugh the elder at his death in 1333 and by his son Hugh in 1363, with Tissington; the Victoria County History of Warwickshire, vol. 4 (Newton Regis), says the Meynell half “remained in the hands of her descendants”. Yeaveley, William’s manor in 1297, was later settled on the younger Hugh and his wife Joan. Daniel Lysons’s Magna Britannia, vol. 5 (1817), has “Hugh de Meinell, who was of Langley-Meinell in 1251, married the heiress of Edensor; his grandson, Sir Hugh, the heiress of Ward”, which fits a generation, William’s, between the two Hughs; the “heiress of Edensor” there reads as Philippa, coheir with the Ednesouere family.

Yeaveley

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 3 (1912), no. 423, Edmund the king’s brother, writ 3 July, 25 Edward I (1297), Derbyshire fees: “Yveleie. The manor held by William de Meignill for 1/2 knight’s fee”. The same list has “Dalbur[y] and part of Osmund[eston], held by Giles de Meignill for 1 knight’s fee”; how Giles was related to William is not stated. I. H. Jeayes, Descriptive Catalogue of Derbyshire Charters (1906), no. 2712, a grant at Yeaveley of Edward I’s time, names “William de Meygnill, Dominus de Yveleye”, and the index lists him as a knight in other charters (nos. 1545–1567, 2006, 2013). None of them names his children.

Seals

Maxwell Craven, A Derbyshire Armory (1991), p. 110, notes a seal “of William de Meynell of Langley, 1277”, and “A cadet, William of Yeaveley, sealed with paly of six a fesse a mullet for difference (seal, 1285, PRO, P.534)”. Craven treats the Yeaveley William as a younger-line man; whether the two Williams are one man, and which of them this William is, is not settled. A William de Meynell who married Agnes Basset of Bisbrooke in Rutland in 1251–54 belongs to an earlier generation and is a different man.

His death

Some online trees give his death as about 1313, after a pedigree in John Nichols’s History of Leicestershire. The calendar of inquests for 1307–1316 has no William de Meynell.