♂William Stonley

William Stonley is known only as the father of the wife of Robert Brome, a lawyer of Warwick in the reign of Richard II whose descendants later held the manor of Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire. He was the eighteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter, Robert Brome’s wife. Through her he was an ancestor of Thomas Dudley^W, later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony^W.

His daughter is said to have been his heiress, and her husband appears in the records in 1396–97, the twentieth year of Richard II’s reign. Her given name is not recorded, and the records do not give William’s dates, where he lived or what his daughter inherited from him.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter’s son John Brome, John’s son John Brome (died 1468), that John’s daughter Isabel Brome, her daughter Alice Denton, Alice’s son Edward Purefoy, Edward’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley (1576–1653) and Thomas’s 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

Sources

James William Hawes, Edmond Hawes of Yarmouth, Massachusetts (1914), p. 76, says only that Robert Brome “married the daughter and heiress of William Stonley”. The Warwickshire heraldic visitation^W of 1619 (Harleian Society vol. 12, p. 97) names Robert’s wife’s father as “Wm. Stonley” and gives nothing more about him.

A namesake priest

William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire (1656) lists a “Will. de Stonley” as a priest instituted to a Warwickshire church in September 1383. Nothing in the sources ties this priest to Robert Brome’s father-in-law, and he is not treated here as the same man.

Stanley

Some online family trees turn the name into Stanley and make him William Stanley of Storeton in Cheshire (died 1398), husband of Alice Massey, with a daughter called Matilda born about 1360. No source supports this.