♂William Sandys

William Sandys^W (died 1542) was an English soldier and courtier of the Vyne^W, a house in the parish of Sherborne St John in Hampshire, who rose to be Lord Sandys of the Vyne, a Knight of the Garter and Chamberlain of the Household to King Henry VIII. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Elizabeth Sandys.

Soldier and courtier

As the peerage histories tell it, William was the son and heir of Sir William Sandys of Andover in Hampshire, who died in 1497, and of Elizabeth Cheney, a daughter of Sir John Cheney of Shurland. He made his name as a soldier. He fought in the wars in Flanders in 1492, was at the defeat of the Cornish rebels^W at Blackheath in 1497, and took a leading part in the wars with France. The Vyne is said to have been the family’s ancient seat, which he won back from the Brocas family, and he “new built” the manor house there.

Under Henry VIII he became one of the king’s leading men. He was one of the commissioners who prepared the king’s meeting with the King of France, and he was elected a Knight of the Garter on 24 April 1518 and installed on 16 May. In 1523 he was Treasurer of Calais^W, and on 27 April that year he was made a baron at the king’s palace of Bridewell. From 1529 he was summoned to Parliament as Lord Sandys de Vyne. He served as Chamberlain of the Household^W from 1530 to 1535, and he went with Cardinal Wolsey to Paris to complain of the sack of Rome^W by the Duke of Bourbon. He was also one of the lords who signed the letter that urged the Pope to grant Henry VIII his divorce.

Marriage and death

He married Margery Bray, the only daughter and heir of John Bray and the niece and heir of Sir Reginald Bray^W, chief minister to King Henry VII. The property she inherited from her uncle was claimed by her cousin Edmund Bray, the heir male, later Lord Bray, and was in the end divided between them. Lord Sandys had three sons and four daughters; among them were Thomas, his heir, and Elizabeth, who married Sir Humphrey Forster of Aldermaston in Berkshire.

By the end of his life he held lands in Hampshire, Wiltshire, Northamptonshire and Sussex, many of them grants from the Crown. He made his will on 8 December 1540, asking to be buried in the chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basingstoke, and it was proved in 1542. The Complete Peerage gives 1542 as the year of his death, while some modern accounts place it in December 1540.

The family

Thomas Sandys, the eldest son, succeeded his father as the second Lord Sandys de Vyne and was summoned to Parliament from 1543 to 1558. He married Elizabeth Manners, a daughter of George Manners, Lord Ros. He died about 1560 and was buried in the chapel of the Holy Ghost at Basingstoke, and his widow Elizabeth was granted the administration of his estate, as “of Mottisfont, Hants”.

Notes

His career

His parents, service, barony, marriage, lands and will are as given in the Complete Peerage (first edition, vol. 7, 1896), which draws on Dugdale; the account of the Vyne and the rebuilt manor house is Dugdale’s, quoting Leland. The second edition’s list of the Knights of the Garter gives the same dates for his nomination and installation. Wikipedia’s article names his mother Edith Cheyne and calls him a younger son; the Complete Peerage, in both editions, gives her as Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Cheney of Shurland, and calls him his father’s son and heir. Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (pp. 359–360) names an elder son, John Sandys of Ringwood, as “son and heir apparent” of Sir William Sandys when John agreed on 11 November 1478 to marry Margaret Bourgchier; John had died by the time Margaret married Thomas Bryan, before 1495. Both accounts can stand: William was the younger son, and he became his father’s heir when John died.

His death

The Complete Peerage gives “He d. 1542”, the year his will was proved, and lists writs of summons to Parliament addressed to him as late as 10 January 1541/2. Wikipedia’s article gives 6 December 1540, from letters written in London and Calais that month reporting him dead. That date falls two days before the date the Complete Peerage gives for his will, so the two accounts cannot both be right. This page follows the Complete Peerage.

His wife and children

The Complete Peerage gives his wife as Margery, “only da. and h. of John Bray (Senior), niece and heir of Sir Reginald Bray, K.G.”, and names no other wife. The Dictionary of National Biography (vol. 6, 1886, p. 238), in its life of Sir Reginald, agrees that his elder brother John had “only one daughter, married to Sir William Sandes, afterwards Lord Sandes of the Vine”. The count of three sons and four daughters comes from the Complete Peerage, which notes that the names of “his 4 daughters and their marriages and his 2 younger sons” are given in Banks’s baronage. Neither the Complete Peerage’s entry for him nor the Dictionary names the mother of the children. On the Bray estate the two differ: the Dictionary says Sir Reginald left the bulk of his fortune to his nephew Edmund, while the Complete Peerage says the property was claimed by Edmund and divided between him and Margery. This page follows the Complete Peerage.