♂William Rody

William Rody (fl. 1353–1361), also written William de Rody, was a landholder of Warwick, England, who acquired a house and woodland at Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire and arranged for it to pass to his children. He was the 18th great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Thomas Rody.

Land at Baddesley Clinton

About 1353 William was a party with the abbot and convent of Bordesley Abbey^W over “La Lee” by Warwick and “le Estmedewe”. On 11 October 1360 Philip, son of Sir Roger de Chetewynde, granted him a messuage with woodland at Baddesley Clinton, and on 29 June 1361 William gave it to Walter Andreu of Stratford, a chaplain. Andreu held it as feoffee^W, a trustee in whose name land could be kept and later settled, and in 1369 the property was settled on William’s son William, with remainder to his brothers and sister and their heirs.

Family

William had three sons, William, John and Thomas, and a daughter, Margery; his wife’s name is not known. The sons William and John are said to have died without children, so the Baddesley Clinton land came through Thomas to his daughter and heir Joane Rody, who married John Brome of Warwick.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Thomas Rody, and they meet again in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both descend from William Rody.

Notes

The deeds

The Bordesley deed of about 1353 (27 Edward III) is in The National Archives at Kew (E 326/5907). The grant of 11 October 1360 and the gift to Walter Andreu of 29 June 1361 are among the Ferrers family papers at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford-upon-Avon (DR 3/99 and DR 3/101).

The children and the 1369 settlement

James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth (1914), pp. 76 and 91–92, following Norris’s history of Baddesley Clinton (1897) and Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire, gives William three sons and a daughter, has the son William come into the Baddesley Clinton property in 1369 with remainder to his brothers and sister, and says that William and John died without issue. Hawes adds that Joane, as heir of Thomas, came into the property, “formerly held by her grandfather William Rody”. Norris repeats the same children and the 1369 settlement.

His parentage

The family tree gives his father as John Rody, and the grant of 11 October 1360 calls William “son and heir of the late John le Rodye”. Hawes (p. 91) names the earliest of the family as John le Rody, whose son and heir William Rody of Warwick had two sons, John and William; on that account this William was John le Rody’s grandson.