♂William Greville

William Greville was a knight of Gloucestershire, England, who is said to have sat as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas^W, the royal court at Westminster that heard disputes between private subjects. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Margery Greville (died 1542).

His seat was Arle Court, in Cheltenham, and he also held lands at Elmstone, in Elmstone Hardwicke, and at Staverton, all in Gloucestershire. He married the daughter and heiress of John Arrell, of Arrell; her own first name is not recorded. Before 1511 his daughter Margery married Richard Lygon, the son and heir of Richard Lygon of Madresfield, in Worcestershire. Margery shared in her father’s estate as one of his co-heiresses, and through her, her husband came to hold Arle Court and Staverton. In the next generation the Greville lands at Arle Court, Elmstone and Staverton passed to Margery’s son and heir, William Ligon.

Notes

Sources

William Greville’s lands, his office, his marriage and his daughter’s marriage are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 510, in the account of his son-in-law, Sir Richard Lygon; the same book, p. 724, calls him “William Greville, Knt., of Cheltenham”. Richardson cites Foss’s Judges of England, vol. 5 (1857), p. 182, for his career. Richardson gives no date or place for his birth, his marriage or his death.

The judge

The heralds’ visitation^W of Worcestershire of 1569, as Richardson quotes it, names Margery as a co-heiress of “Wm Grevell Judg.”, and Burke’s Peerage (1869) calls her father “Mr Justice Greville, of the court of Common Pleas”.

His wife

Magna Carta Ancestry leaves a blank where the first name of William’s wife should be, giving only “daughter and heiress of John Arrell, of Arrell”.