Gresley/Swinnerton

Nathaniel Taylor

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Feb 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/21/98

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I have been looking at the evidence for the identity of Alice, the wife of
John de Gresley (she d. 1349x52). She has been identified as the daughter
of Thomas de Swinnerton and Maud de Holand, and as such is the crux of a
line tracing descent (through Zouche and Holand) from Henry II to various
American colonists (cf. Roberts' _Royal Descents of 500 Immigrants_
[Baltimore, 1993], pp. 350-51). Here is the crucial part:

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1. Could Alice, wife of Sir John Gresley, have been a daughter of Sir
Thomas Swinnerton and Maud Holand?

The chronology is extremely tight, necessitating a fifteen-year-old wife.
Maud Holand was unmarried on 3 November 1332, when her ex-fiance, John de
Mowbray, already then married to Joan of Lancaster, granted her a life
interest in two manors (Calendar of Patent Rolls of Edward III, vol. 3
[1330-1334], p. 368; cited in AR7, p. 35). In the abstract Maud is
referred to in the style of an unmarried woman, "Matilda daughter of
Robert de Holand", and the grant would not make sense if she were already
married to another man.

Just fourteen (or at most fifteen) years later we have the first notice of
Sir John Gresley married to Alice, whom Madan makes a Swinnerton but is
hesitant about calling her a daughter of Thomas de Synnerton (_Gresleys of
Drakelowe_, 49 and 284). Madan says "she occurs as his wife in 1346-7 and
1348-9, but died soon after...", citing two deeds from the "Gresley
cartulary" (which are abstracted in another journal to which I will not
have access, unfortunately, until Monday; hopefully the source he cites
will provide the exact dates of the deeds and perhaps abstracts, if not
full texts). It was Bridgeman who made her a daughter of Thomas and Maud
(Holand) Swinnerton, but he didn't notice the tight chronology
necessitated by the Gresley charters.

2. Was Alice, wife of Sir John Gresley, a Swinnerton at all?

While Alice could have been a Swinnerton, and even a daughter of Sir
Thomas (either by another wife, or, if we countenance the young marriage,
of Sir Thomas and Maud Holand), there is no contemporary evidence that
explicitly supports it. The assertion that she is a Swinnerton (without
assigning parentage) was made in a Latin pedigree given in the enlarged,
1844 ed. of Sampson Erdeswick's _A survey of Staffordshire_ (orig. pub.
1723), which may be the work of Sir Simon Degge (1612-1704) or even of an
earlier genealogist. Bridgeman (Swinnerton, 41), suggested that Alice,
wife of John de Gresley, was a daughter of Sir Thomas Swinnerton, but
without offering any supporting evidence. Against this guess he noted
that the editor (or abstractor) of the Gresley cartulary, John Harland,
had identified Alice (Swinnerton) Gresley as daughter of Sir Roger de
Swynnerton, father (or perhaps older brother) of Sir Thomas (I'll be able
to check Harland and the Thomas/Alice charters on Monday).

3. Did Sir Thomas Swinnerton marry Maud Holand? An embarassment of Mauds.

This question is important for other Swinnerton descendants (such as those
belonging to AR7, line 32). After reading through Bridgeman carefully I
could find no evidence to show that Sir Thomas Swinnerton had a wife named
Maud. There is, in fact, no notice of his wife's name at all, though it
is by no means impossible that Maud de Holand was his wife. As AR7 notes,
the only evidence of Maud's identity as wife of Sir Thomas Swinnerton is
one of the a Savage pedigree in the 1580 Visitation of Cheshire. I looked
at the published Harleian volume this afternoon, and there are two Savage
pedigrees included, one of which identifies Maud Holand as Sir Thomas'
wife, but it seems to have been interpolated with helpful additional
detail by the editors. Aargh.

The existence of an effigy of a 'Maud Swinnerton' with Holand arms in the
church of Swinnerton (cited by Bridgeman, 42) suggests that Maud Holand
did marry one of the Swinnertons. But there seem to have been at least
two Maud Swinnertons, and perhaps three. One Maud appears as widow of a
Sir Roger in 1328, which must be the younger Roger. Aside from the fact
that she was too young to be Maud Holand, she appears to have borne a bend
as her arms (Bridgeman 26-27 and n. 3), so she was obviously someone other
than Maud Holand. Unfortunately Bridgeman provides no conclusive notice
of spouses' names (either Maud or otherwise) for Sir Roger de Swinnerton,
senior, nor for Sir Thomas, though he suspected that all three (Roger Sr.,
Roger Jr., and Thomas) had wives named Maud.

While Roger Jr's wife couldn't have been Maud Holand, Thomas could have
married her (perhaps as his second wife, if Alice is his daughter). She
might also have been the wife of another Swinnerton: old Sir Roger had
several sons, not all of whom are well traced by Bridgeman. It is even
possible that the old Sir Roger, at least 55 by 1332, married the nubile
Maud Holand himself in or after 1332: she would then obviously not have
been the mother of his sons, who seem to have been born say 1305-1315.
Bridgeman thinks the elder Sir Roger probably did leave a widow Maud (in
addition to his son Sir Roger's widow Maud), because in a deed of 1357 a
widow Maud Swinnerton protested her right to present the advowson of the
church at Swinnerton because she held one third of the manor of Swinnerton
itself in dower (Bridgeman, 39). Bridgeman reasons that it was doubtful
that a widow of Sir Roger Jr. (who had d.v.p.) would have received even a
portion of the family seat in dower, but I'm not so sure. Two other
deeds, from 1356 and 1364, mention a widow Maud de Swinnerton, holding
other manors in dower; it can't be determined whether these widow Mauds
are all the same or not.

4. Other Swinnertons

Bridgeman shows that the Swinnerton stock was branching widely in the
generation of Sir Roger and his sons (he had at least three other sons,
who may, theoretically, have married Mauds or produced Alices). His
account is not conclusive in assigning filiation, let alone spouses. In
fact, there are internal inconsistencies between this and later sections
of the tract (some of which were submitted to Bridgeman by other
researchers). The whole Swinnerton package tends to leave the reader less
than confident.

Conclusion:

With regret (as a Gresley descendant), I have to conclude that the
identity of Alice Gresley as a daughter of Sir Thomas Swinnerton and Maud
Holand is not conclusively supported (or even shown to be likely) on the
basis of the evidence I have seen; neither is the identity of Maud Holand
as wife of Thomas de Swinnerton conclusively proven.

Nat Taylor

Richard Ledyard

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Feb 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/22/98

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In the book "A History of the Ancient Hall of Salmesbury in Lancashire" by
James Croston, Maude La Zouche is identified as the husband of Robert de
Holand, who was beheaded on Oct. 7, 1328. The author identifies several
of the La Zouche properties that passed into the Holand family at that
time, as there were no male successors to Maud's father, Alan La Zouche
(baron Zouche). Sir Thomas Holand, KG, Earl of Kent is one of Robert's
sons (He married Joan, The Fair Maid of Kent, who later married Edward,
The Black Prince) The Maud, that married Thomas Swinnerton, is a daughter
of Robert.

Nathaniel Taylor

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Feb 22, 1998, 3:00:00 AM2/22/98

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In article <199802222131_...@compuserve.com>,
7560...@compuserve.com (Richard Ledyard) wrote:

Yes, of course. Sorry. In the genealogy at the head of my post on this
topic read Robert for Thomas, and death date 1328 for 1322. He's
correctly named in the body of the message. My doubt of the
Holand/Swinnerton marriage, based on the weakness of the evidence, still
stands, though the post could use some editing, I see.

Nat Taylor