The IPM of Joan Stradling
Rosie Bevan
I have now received this documentation from the PRO (C/140/75/52) and can report back to the newsgroup that it does indeed contain the inquisitions of Joan, widow of Sir Edward Stradling. The details are summarised as follows.
The writ was issued on 10th December 1479 to enquire into Joan Stradling's landholding in Somerset and Dorset, the date of her death, and the identity and age of her next heir. The escheator took the inquisitions on 26 and 28 June 1480 and found that Joan did not hold anything of the king in chief, but held from a number of feoffees, including her son David Stradling, the manors of Compton Haweye [Compton Hawey] in Dorset, and Comehaweys [Combe Hawey] and Halsewey [Halsway] in Somerset, for the term of the lives of David Stradling, her son, and his wife Margaret. The date of death for Joan was given as 19th October 1479, and her next kinsman and heir was Edward Stradling, son of Thomas Stradling, son of Henry Stradling, son of Joan, aged 4 years and more.
The late date of death for Joan poses a problem for Douglas' version of the Stradling/Denys descent, which can only work if there is an early chronology. This is because Maurice Denys' son and heir, Walter, was born by the early 1430s, as he was the escheator for Gloucestershire in 1457/58. Maurice was born in 1410, so his first wife must have been a close contemporary. Also, from a deed filed in the Bristol Record Office (Ref: D1866/T20), it would appear that Maurice Denys was married to Alice Poyntz by 1434.
The traditional Stradling pedigree has it that Joan was born to Alice fitz Alan, later wife of John, Lord Cherleton. The problem with this scenario is that Joan's birth would have to take place before March 1392, when Alice and John Cherleton were known to be married. This implies a conception occurring in or before 1391 - for any child born during the marriage would be considered John Cherleton's, and he died childless on 19 October 1401. There is no evidence at all that his wife survived him.
Basically we are required to believe that
1. Joan was conceived by the time Henry Beaufort was 15 years old AND
2. Joan had her first son when she was 31 years old AND
3. Joan lived to the age of 87 years.
Any of the three situations would be uncommon individually, but collectively they represent too high a level of improbability. Having had her first son by 1423, it is more plausible that Joan was born a decade later - between 1400-1405 - meaning that the chance that she had a daughter born between 1410-12, as required by the Denys pedigree, is very remote indeed. At a time when it was rare for anyone to reach 80 years of age, let alone 87, Joan's death in 1479 indicates that she lived to a relatively ripe old age of 74-79.
Contrary to the sanitised version of the Stradling pedigree, Beaufort would have already taken holy orders by the time of Joan's conception, when he was bishop of Lincoln, and perhaps Lord Chancellor for the first time. It was not unknown for bishops to have mistresses, and for Henry, groomed for a career in the church from an early age, a celibate lifestyle may have proved an onerous one - he certainly came from a family/social background where bastardy was tacitly accepted.
Taking the above chronological factors arising from the inquisitions into consideration, and the vast array of other issues presented by other members of the newsgroup, the weight of evidence comes down heavily against Katherine Deighton having a descent from Cardinal Beaufort.
Cheers
Rosie
Peter Stewart
thoroughly, and for generously sharing what you discovered with the
newsgroup.
This is an example of responsible scholarship that should be a model of
collegiality for all SGM participants.
Peter Stewart
Brad Verity
> I have now received this documentation from the PRO (C/140/75/52) and can report back to the newsgroup that it does indeed contain the inquisitions of Joan, widow of Sir Edward Stradling. The details are summarised as follows.
Rosie,
Thank you so much for making the effort to obtain this IPM and sharing
its contents. This goes a long way to resolving the entire line.
> The traditional Stradling pedigree has it that Joan was born to
Alice fitz Alan, later wife of John, Lord Cherleton. The problem with
this scenario is that Joan's birth would have to take place before
March 1392, when Alice and John Cherleton were known to be married.
This implies a conception occurring in or before 1391 - for any child
born during the marriage would be considered John Cherleton's, and he
died childless on 19 October 1401. There is no evidence at all that
his wife survived him.
I'd like to add further that Henry Beaufort was born around 1375, and
in that very year, Richard (soon to succeed his father as Earl of
Arundel), was granted wardship of the lands and body of John de
Cherleton, the underage son of the deceased Lord of Powys. He wasn't
granted the marriage of Cherleton, so the eventual match between his
ward and his daughter Alice had to later be approved by and bought
from the King, but this was not a problem for Arundel, the wealthiest
peer of the realm at the time.
Expecting Alice, who was obviously betrothed to Cherleton at a young
age, and young Henry Beaufort, teenaged bastard son of John of Gaunt,
to 'hook up' at some point before May 1392 (when Arundel made out his
will and Alice & Cherleton were not only clearly wed, but Alice
mentioned twice and an apparent favorite of her father), stretches
credibility.
There seems no way chronologically that Alice, Lady Cherleton,
could've been the mother of Bishop Beaufort's bastard. This either
was a misunderstanding on the part of Elizabethan-era Stradling
descendants (a family legend that grew over time, possibly stemming
from a distant kinship with the Arundells of Lanherne, a family that
intermarried with previous Stradlings), or it was a shrewd calculation
to whitewash Bishop Beaufort's bastard child situation. They not only
made the Bishop have his daughter born before he took holy orders (so
as to not have him break his vows) but picked out a noblewoman
contemporary to the Bishop who conveniently died childless and had no
living descendants to offend and made her the Bishop's mistress.
> Basically we are required to believe that
>
> 1. Joan was conceived by the time Henry Beaufort was 15 years old AND
> 2. Joan had her first son when she was 31 years old AND
> 3. Joan lived to the age of 87 years.
With Alice, Lady Cherleton, out of the picture, is it still possible
for Bishop Beaufort to have fathered a child before he took holy
orders in 1397/8? Of course, which is why the death date of Jane
Stradling becomes vital.
mkk...@rcn.com (marshall kirk) wrote in message news:
> You seem to be saying that Jane (Beaufort) Stradling "could not have
> been" over 75 years old at death, and "certainly not" over 80. As far
> as I can see, this uncompromising stance is no more than an assumption
> deriving from probability, which I take to be based on the
> demographics of the period ? and, I suspect, on the gross
> improbability -- which you correctly observe -- that any given newborn
> English girl would survive to 88.
That's exactly what I'm assuming. The only two 15th-century
noblewomen I can think of off the top of my head who lived so long
were the two sisters Katherine, Duchess of Norfolk, and Cecily,
Duchess of York, who both lived to be about 80. Ironically, they were
first cousins of Jane Stradling, so giving her an age of 80 at death
would make her year of birth 1399. Tacking a couple more years onto
that to make her born 1396/7, before Beaufort took holy orders, is not
outside the realm of possibility.
But remember that the only statement we have that tells us Jane was
born before Beaufort took holy orders, is 200 years after the fact,
and made by descendants who had every motivation to whitewash their
ancestry (and who indeed did just that in regard to earlier
generations of Stradlings).
> All that to the side, I have the uneasy feeling that the probability
> that Jane Beaufort lived to be 88 is conditional on still broader
> considerations. The clearest way I can put it, briefly, is to say
> that, if a theory comprising several positive evidences -- even weak
> ones -- requires also that one player lived to a great age, the
> probability of that great age is higher than it would be if taken in
> isolation.
I agree here, but the other evidences (in this case, the statement
from the Stradling descendants), is so weak, that I don't think we
need adjust Jane's probable age at death on that basis alone.
heli...@yahoo.com (Jay) wrote in message news:
> On one methodological notes, was the wardship of Maurice Denys one
> granted by the crown (for a fee) providing some lucrative benefits to
> Edward Stradling and/or the Bishop Henry Beaufort, such that there may
> be another motive beyond marrying a daughter (in Edward's case) or a
> granddaughter ( in Henry's case) for getting involved in the wardship
> of said Maurice, namely the remuneration from managing the Denys
> estates? That far from being above such finagling, this was a
> lucrative business even among even the greater magnates of the realm?
Yes indeed. Sir Edward Stradling, by the grant of the wardship of the
Dennys lands during Maurice's minority, would receive all the income
from those lands (minus an annual rent he had to pay the crown for the
privilege) until Maurice came of age, so in 1422, he was looking at a
good 10 years of extra income.
> If so could this said to perhaps mute the evidence of the wardship
> with respect to the case of Katherin Stradling as daughter of Edward
> and granddaughter of Henry?
I would say that Edward Stradling being granted wardship of the Dennys
lands in 1422 corroborates the case that his daughter Katherine was
the first wife of Maurice Dennys (per a Visitation alomst 200 years
after the fact), since many times a guardian managed to marry a ward
off to a relative even if the marriage of the ward was not included in
the grant of the ward's lands. (He would simply have to petition the
crown for approval of the match and pay the king whatever the ward's
marriage was worth.)
But what the fact that the marriage was NOT included in the original
grant can tell us is that marriage was not the primary motivator for
obtaining the wardship. The subsequent marriage (if it occurred) was
a result, rather than the cause, of the 1422 wardship.
So the argument that this grant of wardship corroborates Katherine
Stradling being a granddaughter of Bishop Beaufort, falls apart on
three points:
1) It may not have been Beaufort who actively manuevered the Dennys
properties' wardship into his son-in-law Stradling's hands (though he
probably aided the process) - Sir Edward Stradling's sister-in-law was
the stepmother of the Dennys widow.
2) Even if Beaufort, from his position on the infant king's council,
aided Stradling in obtaining the wardship, it does not seem to have
been to help settle a granddaughter, since the marriage of the Dennys
heir - which Beaufort was in as easy a position to grant - was not
included.
3) There is no reason to think Beaufort, who not only had fathered a
bastard, but had been born one himself, would have an issue with his
son-in-law settling his own pre-marriage bastards properly.
jhigg...@earthlink.net ("John Higgins") wrote in message news:
> The referenced pedigree in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica covers
> the Beauforts, but only those who had legitimate descendants. So Cardinal
> Henry isn't mentioned, and thus the connections to Stradling and possibly to
> Dennis are also omitted.
> Therefore, no evidence for Katherine Stradling in this source either.
Thank you for checking this reference John - I appreciate it.
gryph...@aol.com (Gryphon801) wrote in message news:
> In fact that is exactly what Clark does do: on page 382 he says that Morris
> Dennis married (1) Katherine, daughter of Sir Edward Stradling, and on page 435
> he idscusses Sir Edward Stradling without mentioning Katherine among his
> children but referring to Sir Edward's many bastards. So there is no support
> here for the theory that Sir Walter Dennis was a grandson of Jane Beaufort.
Thank you for verifying the Dennis pedigree in Clark - I have no
access to Clarks' work. It seems to me Clark merely repeats the
Visitation evidence here.
I hope this clears up some of the lingering questions, and I once
again want to thank Rosie for taking the time to go to an original
source and sharing it with us.
Cheers, -------Brad
marshall kirk
[snip .. not because it's not interesting, useful, and appreciated,
which it is]
> Basically we are required to believe that
>
> 1. Joan was conceived by the time Henry Beaufort was 15 years old AND
> 2. Joan had her first son when she was 31 years old AND
> 3. Joan lived to the age of 87 years.
>
> Any of the three situations would be uncommon individually, but
collectively they represent too high a level of improbability. Having
had her first son by 1423, it is more plausible that Joan was born a
decade later - between 1400-1405 - meaning that the chance that she
had a daughter born between 1410-12, as required by the Denys
pedigree, is very remote indeed. At a time when it was rare for anyone
to reach 80 years of age, let alone 87, Joan's death in 1479 indicates
that she lived to a relatively ripe old age of 74-79.
********
Rosie,
thanks for looking up the IPM. Would also like to see the deed to
which you alluded, showing that Alice Poyntz had apparently become (2)
wf. by 1434.
I take issue, however, with some of your reasoning from probabilities,
as above. (Tho' the basic approach is good.) Specifically -- and to
correspond with your numbering of points --
1. Since we know that Joan Beaufort was a bastard of Henry, what
would be "uncommon" about him being fifteen when he got a girl
pregnant? The majority of boys, if well-nourished -- which we can
assume, I think, for the Beaufort household -- are and presumably were
fertile by 15 (*I* was at 11). (I speak from some study, years ago,
of the medical-journal literature on puberty and fertility
statistics.) I don't see it as markedly less likely, knowing that a
man fathered a bastard, that he did so at 15 than at 20 or 25. In
fact, it might be argued that the early siring of a bastard is favored
by the probabilities, simply because boys of 15 presumably have less
sense and self-control, come average, than men of 25. (Not that I'd
lean too heavily on that!)
2. Well, none of this requires a belief that Joan bore her first son
when she was 31 -- it requires that we believe that she bore her first
*surviving* son at 31. Half of all kids are girls; and in the society
we're talking about, perhaps half of all kids died young. A mother
could easily end up with an heir male born when she was 31, without
straining likelihoods. (Although my grandfather was married six
times, and had multiple sons, my father -- born to his sixth wife,
when he was 62 -- was the only one to survive him AND leave issue.)
3. Some readers might infer that your implicit point is that very,
very few English girls born in the 1300s survived to age 87. But
that's not the cadre we're talking about. The question is, how likely
is it that a girl who, to use your own figures, survived *in any
event* to 74-79, *continued* to live to 87? The probability's far,
far higher. Indeed, there's reason to believe that, in a society with
ineffectual medical resources, those who survived to, say, 75, had a
*better* chance of reaching 87 than 75-year-olds do today, simply
because, lacking antibiotics and so forth, they must have had
unusually good immune systems to get through their first seven-plus
decades. The peculiar survival curves of blacks v. whites in today's
U.S. may be due to such a mechanism.
All this should also be considered in light of the fact that the joint
probability of the above contingencies all proving true is conditioned
by the joint strength of the external evidence. To take the extreme
(but illustrative) case: if the external evidence were so strong as
to be absolutely confirmatory, then we'd *have* to assess the
probability of points 1-3 being all true as 100%, whatever their
independent raw probabilities might be. The same effect should occur,
in lesser degree, for external evidence which falls short of 100%
persuasiveness.
By the way, you also seem to be implying, for purposes of estimation,
that a girl had her first kid when she was 20+. This may have been
true for the yeomanry, but I don't think it was for the aristocracy,
in which marriage at 15 (sometimes younger, sometimes older) and first
child at 16 or so would probably be more typical. Once again, the
average girl becomes, and presumably became, fertile at 13, and the
majority are at 15. (These figures vary a bit with ethnic group, but
that's not much of problem here.)
This is as good a place as any to reiterate a point I've made before:
we need a lot more discussion of the rules by which the evidence for
this sort of hypothesis should be assessed -- the essential methods
being less deduction than induction and probability models. (As
Rosie's remarks implicitly acknowledge.)
Back to my sickbed -- got pneumonia.
--mk
Rosie Bevan
Please see my comments below
----- Original Message -----
From: "marshall kirk" <mkk...@rcn.com>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 10:07 AM
Subject: Re: The IPM of Joan Stradling
> rbe...@paradise.net.nz (Rosie Bevan) wrote in message
news:<36f501c40423$efe84680$cd00a8c0@rosie>...
>
> [snip .. not because it's not interesting, useful, and appreciated,
> which it is]
But...
>
> > Basically we are required to believe that
> >
> > 1. Joan was conceived by the time Henry Beaufort was 15 years old AND
> > 2. Joan had her first son when she was 31 years old AND
> > 3. Joan lived to the age of 87 years.
> >
> > Any of the three situations would be uncommon individually, but
> collectively they represent too high a level of improbability. Having
> had her first son by 1423, it is more plausible that Joan was born a
> decade later - between 1400-1405 - meaning that the chance that she
> had a daughter born between 1410-12, as required by the Denys
> pedigree, is very remote indeed. At a time when it was rare for anyone
> to reach 80 years of age, let alone 87, Joan's death in 1479 indicates
> that she lived to a relatively ripe old age of 74-79.
>
> ********
>
> Rosie,
>
> thanks for looking up the IPM. Would also like to see the deed to
> which you alluded, showing that Alice Poyntz had apparently become (2)
> wf. by 1434.
This was cited by Brad in his third big post on Katherine Deighton's
ancestry, but here it is below. Usually deeds of this nature were witnessed
by family members.
Bristol Record Office - Ashton Court
Creation dates: [1434]
Extent and Form: 1
Scope and Content
6 Oct., 13 Hen. VI
Grant:
(i) John ap Tomelyn alias John Huntely
(ii) Sir Maurice Berkeley de Beverstone
- 2a. arable in the field of Beverstone and the advowson or patronage of the
house and church of the Friars Preachers [Dominicans] in Bristol.
Warranty against all men.
Witnesses: Robert Poyntz, Thomas Bradston [ ? Nicholas] Poyntz, Maurice
Denys, Thomas Poyntz, knights, Walter Herne, John Hambroke.
Seal: on tag (fragments), round, red, chevron charged with 3 bugle horns
between bucks heads [arms of Huntley] legend; indecipherable.
>
> I take issue, however, with some of your reasoning from probabilities,
> as above. (Tho' the basic approach is good.) Specifically -- and to
> correspond with your numbering of points --
>
> 1. Since we know that Joan Beaufort was a bastard of Henry, what
> would be "uncommon" about him being fifteen when he got a girl
> pregnant? The majority of boys, if well-nourished -- which we can
> assume, I think, for the Beaufort household -- are and presumably were
> fertile by 15 (*I* was at 11). (I speak from some study, years ago,
> of the medical-journal literature on puberty and fertility
> statistics.) I don't see it as markedly less likely, knowing that a
> man fathered a bastard, that he did so at 15 than at 20 or 25. In
> fact, it might be argued that the early siring of a bastard is favored
> by the probabilities, simply because boys of 15 presumably have less
> sense and self-control, come average, than men of 25. (Not that I'd
> lean too heavily on that!)
I'd prefer you kept within the context of the situation. It is fairly
obvious that Henry Beaufort was being groomed for a high position in the
church from an early age. For this study in theology and law was required
and university study started at the age of 14. The DNB article says that
Henry Beaufort studied in Aachen for quite some time in his youth. He
certainly attained an MA and continued his studies later at Oxford. His
first entry in the Calender of Papal Letters is for April 1397 when he was
was given an indult to farm his benefices while he was studying theology at
Oxford. However we are not talking about any 15 year old boy impregnating
any girl (and this I should have made clearer), we are talking about the son
of the duke of Lancaster impregnating a daughter of the earl of Arundel out
of wedlock. How many times do you know of this happening amongst aristocracy
while the daughter was betrothed to someone else whom she later married? In
an age where the daughters of the nobility were highly segregated and
guarded, you have to ask yourself whether Henry Beaufort, aged 15, under
tutelage in Germany, had easy access to Alice, presumably residing in the
earl of Arundel's household, to impregnate her. How probable is this?
Moreover Alice's date of birth, as the earl's youngest daughter, has been
calculated to between 1383-85, which would make her 7-9 years old in 1392.
If this is correct, even with the earliest known birth at the age of 5
years and 7 months [source: my daughter], Alice giving birth to Joan at that
time must be considered impossible.
>
> 2. Well, none of this requires a belief that Joan bore her first son
> when she was 31 -- it requires that we believe that she bore her first
> *surviving* son at 31. Half of all kids are girls; and in the society
> we're talking about, perhaps half of all kids died young. A mother
> could easily end up with an heir male born when she was 31, without
> straining likelihoods. (Although my grandfather was married six
> times, and had multiple sons, my father -- born to his sixth wife,
> when he was 62 -- was the only one to survive him AND leave issue.)
Again you are looking at things in general when you should be looking at it
in context. Joan was not an heiress, but the greatest asset she had were her
family connections - and these proved lucrative as any dower, for from 1422
Edward Stradling started receiving favours which were to continue for many
years under the patronage of Henry Beaufort. The timing of the beginning of
favours is as likely an indication of the time of their marriage, as any.
There is a cluster around 1422/23:
17 July 1422 Edward Stradling received the custody of the lands of Maurice
Denys (note: the lands, not the marriage of the heir).
Oct 1423 Edward Stradling and Joan his wife received a papal indult to have
a portable altar
Oct 1423 On the petition by Edward Stradling and the intercession of Henry
Beaufort, the Pope authorised a licence for the church of Compton Hawey to
have a cemetery.
4 Dec 1423 Edward Stradling appointed chamberlain and receiver of South
Wales.
We know that Henry Stradling was born about 1423, and his given name is a
strong indicator that he was their first born son. Taking this into
consideration, and more, is it reasonable to believe Joan was 31 when she
gave birth to Henry?
>
> 3. Some readers might infer that your implicit point is that very,
> very few English girls born in the 1300s survived to age 87. But
> that's not the cadre we're talking about. The question is, how likely
> is it that a girl who, to use your own figures, survived *in any
> event* to 74-79, *continued* to live to 87? The probability's far,
> far higher. Indeed, there's reason to believe that, in a society with
> ineffectual medical resources, those who survived to, say, 75, had a
> *better* chance of reaching 87 than 75-year-olds do today, simply
> because, lacking antibiotics and so forth, they must have had
> unusually good immune systems to get through their first seven-plus
> decades. The peculiar survival curves of blacks v. whites in today's
> U.S. may be due to such a mechanism.
Perhaps a study of medieval longevity amongst the nobility might come in
useful, but I stand by what I say in saying it was rare for anyone to reach
87. I don't think this is disputable. I never said it was impossible.
>
> All this should also be considered in light of the fact that the joint
> probability of the above contingencies all proving true is conditioned
> by the joint strength of the external evidence. To take the extreme
> (but illustrative) case: if the external evidence were so strong as
> to be absolutely confirmatory, then we'd *have* to assess the
> probability of points 1-3 being all true as 100%, whatever their
> independent raw probabilities might be. The same effect should occur,
> in lesser degree, for external evidence which falls short of 100%
> persuasiveness.
Well, yes, I believe this is exactly what I was doing, but it is difficult
turning people's lives into statistics. I would prefer to use other factors
too.
>
> By the way, you also seem to be implying, for purposes of estimation,
> that a girl had her first kid when she was 20+. This may have been
> true for the yeomanry, but I don't think it was for the aristocracy,
> in which marriage at 15 (sometimes younger, sometimes older) and first
> child at 16 or so would probably be more typical. Once again, the
> average girl becomes, and presumably became, fertile at 13, and the
> majority are at 15. (These figures vary a bit with ethnic group, but
> that's not much of problem here.)
Again, I reiterate that Joan was not an heiress so there was no hurry for
her to get married and start a family. All indications are that she had
passed puberty by the time she married Edward Stradling because she seems to
have had a child almost straight away. There seems no doubt of the natural
affection which Beaufort bore her - she was the first legatee mentioned in
his will, and he was generous with his bequests even though there was a
problem about the provenance of his assets (the crown jewels in hock). I
would think that she had been brought up in his household and she was
acknowledged.
I gave 20 as a rough median age, but, yes, Joan could have been born later -
as late as 1415 in theory, and this of course would demolish the
Stradling/Denys pedigree altogether.
>
> This is as good a place as any to reiterate a point I've made before:
> we need a lot more discussion of the rules by which the evidence for
> this sort of hypothesis should be assessed -- the essential methods
> being less deduction than induction and probability models. (As
> Rosie's remarks implicitly acknowledge.)
Well, statistics are only one aspect of the equation in medieval genealogy-
others are familiarity with, and understanding of sources, a knowledge of
Latin and medieval French, understanding of social processes, a logical mind
and critical analysis, a grasp of history, determination....
But this is all very ephemeral - the main problem with the Stradling/Denys
line is that there is no evidence that Katherine Stradling ever existed!
Nor is there any evidence of Stradling/fitz Alan dealings, no evidence of
Beaufort patronage of the Denys family, no mention of any Denys in Henry
Beaufort's will, no evidence of Denys/Stradling land dealings, no member of
the Denys family was a feoffee of Joan.
I take it by your interest in this subject that you have a descent from
Katherine Deighton?
> Back to my sickbed -- got pneumonia.
Sorry to hear it, I hope you get better soon.
Cheers
Rosie
marshall kirk
to address your last question first, yes, I am a Deighton descendant.
(It would be interesting to see a show of hands here, and line up the
pros and cons ...) That's why I decided some time since to recuse
myself from this discussion, save for highly specific points -- too
much risk of unconscious bias in favor of the line. As it stands, I'm
officially an agnostic, watching the debate go by.
Your most telling point, actually, is the estimate that Alice was born
ca. 1383-5. *If* this estimate is well-founded, then there's no point
in further debate -- I would not accept an English girl giving birth
at 7, or even at 9, unless there was overwhelming external evidence,
which there isn't here. Pregnancy at such an early age is rare in the
extreme. So everything else I have to say could be rendered
irrelevant -- if the estimate is sound.
As for the deed, thanks again. However, although it demonstrates that
the relevant people were doing business together, I'm not clear as to
why it suggests that Denys had yet married Poyntz's daughter.
Presumably, they knew one another fairly well in advance anyway, and
that was why Denys was aware of Poyntz's kid and chose to marry her.
OTOH, there certainly may be something here I'm missing.
I agree that the social/personal context of each situation is
important. But so is the biological/demographic context. The
argument in any such situation is, and inherently must be,
probabilistic in nature. Your own arguments re: the social/personal
context are probabilistic -- you ask "how likely" a given scenario is.
In principle, I thoroughly agree. In practice, tho', the trouble
with social/personal contexts is that they're far less amenable to
empirical quantification, and far more a matter of subjective
interpretation. To take Henry's age at producing bastardly Joan: you
seem to be making two points. First, that Henry Beaufort was a
student, aimed at the Church, from an early age. (The unwritten
implication would seem to be either that he was too pious to father a
bastard, or didn't have the time. I assume the latter -- unless you
meant to imply something else, in which case, please clarify --
because he certainly wasn't too pious to father her at *some* point.)
Second, you appear to be asserting that Alice would have been too well
guarded for Henry to get her in the sack.
A counterargument would be that Henry, as a member of the Beaufort
family, certainly didn't spend the whole of his teen years in
Germany. As the son of an aristocratic family, he would have spent a
good deal of time at home, too; and, with the rest of the family,
visiting other aristocratic families, presumably including that of the
Earl of Arundel. As to whether he could or could not have had a
private quarter hour with Alice ... to some extent, that depended on
Alice. I'm not all that confident that girls were always kept that
firmly under lock and key. As to how many cases I (or for that matter
you) know of in which such a scenario played out ... *would* we know?
I suspect that those we'd learn of *via* historical documentation were
the tip of the iceberg.----I'm not saying that your argument is
without strength, which it does have; merely pointing out that such
situations aren't cut and dried, and that where there's a will,
there's often a way. The essential point here is that argument and
counterargument are both subjective.
Your point concerning the timing of favors is well taken, and has
weight.
You assert, however, that Henry's name indicates that he was his
mother's first-born son. Again, first-born *surviving* son. She
could easily have had a son Henry once or twice before, with both
dying. I've seen a fair number of cases in which people kept grimly
assigning a given name they wanted to perpetuate to one short-lived
child after another. Wasn't Edward Gibbon the umpteenth son to be
named Edward, all the earlier sons of that name having wheezed their
last at early ages? (Not sure I'm remembering his potted biography
correctly.)
On the whole, tho', this point strongly sways me.
Point 3: you say that "I stand by what I say in saying it was rare
for anyone to reach 87. I don't think this is disputable. I never said
it was impossible."
I'm not sure I made my point clear, but I too stand by it. Again, it
was indeed rare for someone to reach 87, if your starting cadre is
"all newborn girls." It wasn't rare if -- as is the case here -- your
starting cadre is "all women known to have reached at least the age of
75."
I don't wish to go into the rest of the argument as a whole, for the
reason I mentioned above: as a descendant, and a human being, bias is
likely. I'll merely say that you makes some strong arguments, and
some that seem to me impugnable.
You also write that
"statistics are only one aspect of the equation in medieval genealogy-
others are familiarity with, and understanding of sources, a knowledge
of
Latin and medieval French, understanding of social processes, a
logical mind
and critical analysis, a grasp of history, determination...."
And you were being so polite! :( I thoroughly agree, and merely
wished to lay emphasis on the statistics, precisely because they're
insufficiently emphasized in this group --and they *should* be
emphasized, because they're subject, in principle, to quantification
and testing, and because our arguments are in large part from
probability.----By the way, I *do* have more than a little familiarity
with, and understanding of, the "other aspects of the equation" to
which you allude, and a great deal *vis-a-vis* some of them. (With
the notable exception, I admit, of "determination." I'm also pretty
weak in Latin.) However, I find the parading of credentials
distasteful, and the credentials themselves unimpressive, if not
downright irrelevant.----You, Rosie, seem to me to know more than I do
about medieval genealogy in general -- but nobody, including me, is
infallible, or too well educated to have his or her impressions and
opinions modified.
By the way, your posts strike me as substantive and reasonably civil,
and therefore worth debating over. However, I'll now fade back into
the wallpaper.
Regards,
MK
rbe...@paradise.net.nz (Rosie Bevan) wrote in message news:<382901c404dc$2f1c3330$cd00a8c0@rosie>...
Richard Smyth at UNC-CH
> I'm not sure I made my point clear, but I too stand by it. Again, it
> was indeed rare for someone to reach 87, if your starting cadre is
> "all newborn girls." It wasn't rare if -- as is the case here -- your
> starting cadre is "all women known to have reached at least the age of
> 75."
If we are determined to argue from probabilities, can we not use, as the
upper limit for the probabilities (in the objective, relative frequency
sense) determining a female's life expectancy, the figures from the
mortality table of a 75 year old female living in the U.S. in some recent
year---say 2000. If one did that, one would not reasonably expect the
medieval woman to live beyond 85.1 years at the limit.
(It has been my observation that most probability arguments applied to
history generally and to family history in particular are unsound arguments.
Among other things, they tend to depend upon what are only subjective
estimates of probability.)
Regards,
Richard Smyth
sm...@nc.rr.com
marshall kirk
received at home, but don't yet see here. (My Google connection is,
as somebody pointed out recently, grossly delayed -- I see people's
posts 3 to 9 hours after they've been posted.)
I assume Richard's post will appear before this one does.
*******
Actually, Richard, subjectivity is exactly what I'm trying to avoid,
to the extent that that's possible, by quantifying what can be
quantified. (Much can't be, of course.) Surely an argument based on
empirically derived numbers, or even on a set of subjective estimates
of numbers, fed into a statistical model that accurately reflects how
-- and to what degree -- the components affect one another, is likely
to be more reliable than a global impression, expressed in words of
doubtful meaning? (Probably, possibly, very likely, and so on -- what
exactly do people mean by such terminology? Do all people who use it
mean the *same* thing? On general principles, I doubt it.)
As for the actuarial tables for life expectancy in the U.S., I suspect
that what you're seeing is the "50% survival" life expectancy of
75-year-old women. In other words, half of women in the U.S. who've
reached 75 -- expectancy at birth is around 78 -- will die before
85.1, half after. (The 50% survival expectancy at 90 is still 3 years
or more, I believe.) That's how the tables are generally expressed,
and that, as a 50% survival figure for women of 75, sounds about the
same as what I remember. (Tho' the last tables I studied dated from
about 1990, I think.) Or are you using, say, the 25% survival age?
None of these are limits, naturally. (The world limit is currently
122.) We also should take into consideration the fact that minorities
with poor health care who die at earlier ages, on average, than
whites, have, past a certain attained age, *higher* life expectancies
than whites ... presumably because they have unusually tough
constitutions (I'm thinking primarily of humoral immune response,
which varies greatly), which largely explains why they've outlived
their proper cadre to begin with. (Were it not for antibiotics and
surgery, I'd have been dead five times over by now, and I'm only 46.)
I'd expect something of the same phenomenon to be operative among the
medieval English, tho' I suggest that much more tentatively.
It's said that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics; but my
reply would have to be, you can only lie with statistics to people who
don't understand statistics. I'm by no means an expert, and I've
forgotten much of what I once knew, but I was given the training
thought appropriate for a Harvard doctoral candidate in the social
sciences, for whom inferential statistics is crucial. I did well in
the subject, and have found the concepts extremely useful in
hypothesis testing ever since. I share some of these concepts just
because I find them so valuable. My understanding may want correcting
by real experts -- there are certain statistical topics that have
always deeply dismayed me, because they produce results that don't
seem to make intuitive sense. (Bayes's Theorem, for example.) But
that's all the more reason to try to understand and apply them, as
doing so may avoid seduction by intuitions that are natural and
persuasive, but wrong.
Well: I've noted an unusual number of uncaught typos in my latest, so
I suspect this isn't an optimal time for me to be writing.
(Especially with extreme rapidity.) I'd like to say once more,
however, that, at this point, I'm not advocating anything with respect
to the Stradlings. I simply dunno. I comment only on very specific
points that don't seem, in their nature, apt to invite distortion from
my possible "pro" bias. Clearly, further individual items, some of
them telling, are still emerging.
Back to the wallpaper!
Richard Smyth at Road Runner
Richard Smyth at Road Runner
> Actually, Richard, subjectivity is exactly what I'm trying to avoid,
> to the extent that that's possible, by quantifying what can be
> quantified. (Much can't be, of course.) Surely an argument based on
> empirically derived numbers, or even on a set of subjective estimates
> of numbers, fed into a statistical model that accurately reflects how
> -- and to what degree -- the components affect one another, is likely
> to be more reliable than a global impression, expressed in words of
> doubtful meaning? (Probably, possibly, very likely, and so on -- what
> exactly do people mean by such terminology? Do all people who use it
> mean the *same* thing? On general principles, I doubt it.)
Where an argument relies on numbers that really are "empirically derived" I
would applaud it. But if you are trying to avoid subjectivity, you will not
do so by constructing arguments that depend upon converting subjective
impressions into hard numbers. All that you accomplish by that is
concealing the problem of subjectivity, not avoiding it. Actually, it is
worse than concealing subjectivity; it is replacing an honest expression of
subjective judgment with the spurious look of exactness. The honest answer
to your question: "Probably, possibly, very likely, and so on -- what
exactly do people mean by such terminology?" has two parts: (1) It is not
the case that there is anything very precise which is exactly what they
mean, because they mean something which is intrinsically vague, but (2) only
people who have not studied logic believe that it is impossible to construct
sound arguments from vague premises.
Regards,
Richard Smyth
sm...@nc.rr.com
Brad Verity
[snip of material other than Henry-Alice]
> Your most telling point, actually, is the estimate that Alice was born
> ca. 1383-5. *If* this estimate is well-founded, then there's no point
> in further debate -- I would not accept an English girl giving birth
> at 7, or even at 9, unless there was overwhelming external evidence,
> which there isn't here. Pregnancy at such an early age is rare in the
> extreme. So everything else I have to say could be rendered
> irrelevant -- if the estimate is sound.
Rosie was following incorrect information from historian K.B.
McFarlane, who pointed out in his article 'At the Deathbed of Cardinal
Beaufort' that Alice is generally described (in the DNB and in M.A.
Tierney's "History of Arundel") as the Earl of Arundel's youngest
daughter. She was actually the eldest surviving daughter.
The daughters of the Earl of Arundel (d. 1397):
1) Eleanor, first daughter, betrothed to the heir of the earl of
Suffolk in 1371 before her father succeeded as earl of Arundel, but
died young.
2) Alice, eldest surviving daughter, betrothed - probably 1375/6 - to
John Cherleton, Lord of Powys, ward of her father. Alice is listed
first among the daughters in the Chartulary of Lewes Abbey, which was
composed in the 1430s (they skip Eleanor completely). She died s.p.
per the Chartulary. Cherleton died 1401, and Alice must've died
before him.
3) Elizabeth & 4) Joan, twins, born about 1370. Lewes Chartulary:
"Elizabeth and Joan were born at one time." Their ages match each
other in every IPM return of their brother Thomas, Earl of Arundel.
Elizabeth was betrothed in 1378 to William Montagu, son & heir of the
earl of Salisbury, but he died in 1382. She was married again in July
1384 to Thomas Mowbray, Earl Marshal (later Duke of Norfolk). Joan
was married by 1388 to William Beauchamp, later Lord Abergavenny.
Note: If Alice had been younger than the twins, one would think
Cherleton (b. 1362) would have been given one of the twins as a bride.
5) Margaret, youngest daughter, born about 1383, married (after Henry
IV became King) to Sir Rowland Lenthal, a Herefordshire favorite of
the new king.
I think if any of these girls had an affair with Bishop Beaufort, it
was Margaret, the youngest. And it would have occured AFTER Beaufort
became a bishop in 1398, and Margaret's father Arundel had been
executed the previous year. Her marriage was far beneath her sisters
and seems to have been arranged by Henry IV or Henry V. She was
married to Lenthal by her brother's death in 1415, but her two sons
were not born until afterwards. It's intriguing to think she may have
had an affair with Henry Beaufort (tutor to Harry Prince of Wales -
later Henry V) in the early 1400s, and had Jane, before her marriage
to the obscure knight Lenthal.
But I still think the likeliest explanation - given the apparent lack
of interaction between Jane Stradling and any of the other
grandchildren of the Earl of Arundel - is that Jane's mother was a
woman in the bishop's household or a member of his diocese.
> A counterargument would be that Henry, as a member of the Beaufort
> family, certainly didn't spend the whole of his teen years in
> Germany. As the son of an aristocratic family, he would have spent a
> good deal of time at home, too; and, with the rest of the family,
> visiting other aristocratic families, presumably including that of the
> Earl of Arundel.
In 1394, the earl of Arundel became a vocal political opponent to John
of Gaunt, so I doubt the families paid visits at all.
> As to whether he could or could not have had a
> private quarter hour with Alice ... to some extent, that depended on
> Alice. I'm not all that confident that girls were always kept that
> firmly under lock and key.
OK, let's remove Alice from the picture entirely - the chronology just
does not work at all for her.
As for Henry Beaufort impregnating ANY daughter of the Earl of Arundel
as a teenager - no. His younger Beaufort brother and sister found
their spouses amongst the knightly retainers of John of Gaunt, so it
is doubtful the Beauforts would even have been seen as equals to the
Arundel children prior to their legitimation. Gaunt did raise them in
the household along with his legitimate children, but what other
nobles thought of that remains unknown.
Henry Beaufort, meanwhile, saw firsthand what happened when a noble
daughter, betrothed to a peer, was impregnated by another man. His
own half-sister, Elizabeth of Lancaster, was betrothed to the Earl of
Pembroke, but started an affair with John Holland, Richard II's
half-brother (the Casanova of the late-14th century English court),
that resulted in a pregnancy. Gaunt pulled her out of the Pembroke
match and immediately married her off to Holland.
Hope this helps.
Cheers, ------Brad
marshall kirk
you that a set of estimates, even when some are subjective (note that
not all will be!), will, if fed into a statistical model that
accurately reflects the nature of the arithmetical interaction of the
relevant quantities, be (on average) *more* accurate than a single,
subjective *global* estimate. Why? Two reasons. First, the process
forces the modeler to consider the individual elements of his
hypothesis, and to quantify them individually, which in itself puts a
premium on rigorous thinking; and second, if the model is properly
selected, the modeler avoids the errors that tend to arise from a lack
of consideration, or a fallacious understanding, of the ways in which
variables interact. (Which, as I've noted, is often
counterintuitive.) This is basic to hypothesis testing, basic to the
social sciences (of which genealogy, like it or not, is one), and not
a matter for debate, save in the details of its application.
I bring to the table for consideration a way of reasoning that offers
advantages in power and precision over the one-word approvals or
dismissals of the local Sir Oracle. I'd think that that in itself
would be worth pausing and musing over.
sm...@nc.rr.com ("Richard Smyth at Road Runner") wrote in message news:<002b01c40546$c17b4f30$0201a8c0@peirce>...
Rosie Bevan
Thank you for correcting my statement about the age and identity of
Arundel's youngest daughter. If Alice was betrothed in 1375/6, following the
usual pattern of marriage she would have been certainly married to John
Cherleton within a 7-10 year period after that date (by 1386), when Beaufort
was 10 years old.
Your observations about Margaret are very intriguing - Rowland Lenthall was
a Lancastrian retainer and no doubt the marriage to her was a personal
reward by the king. However, it is plain that she could not have been the
mother of Joan before 1392.
It could be argued that if Beaufort had fathered a child by one of Arundel's
daughters before 1392, he would have been expected to marry her, as he
hadn't taken holy orders by that stage, and her marriage prospects would
have been so seriously damaged by the liaison his bastardy may not have been
of much significance in the full equation. As this did not occur and there
is no whiff of scandal recorded, it is reasonable to assume that it did not
happen.
I'm inclined to agree with Brad that Joan's mother was someone who had lived
in the bishop's household and that Joan grew up knowing her father well, and
remained through her marriage, within his sphere of influence.
An interesting point is that she survived her husband by 27 years. Did she
remarry?
Cheers
Rosie
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brad Verity" <bat...@hotmail.com>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: The IPM of Joan Stradling
Richard Smyth at Road Runner
of subjective probabilities in historical research.
Those on the list who have an interest in the pursuing the matter will find
a viewpoint antithetical to Kirk's in Charles S. Peirce's "The Logic of
Drawing History from Ancient Documents".[Collected Papers of Charles Sanders
Peirce, vol. 7, p. 89ff.]
>let me assure
> you that a set of estimates, even when some are subjective (note that
> not all will be!), will, if fed into a statistical model that
> accurately reflects the nature of the arithmetical interaction of the
> relevant quantities, be (on average) *more* accurate than a single,
> subjective *global* estimate.
Regards,
Richard Smyth
Douglas Richardson
While everyone is patting themselves on the back and issuing
statements of certain knowledge regarding the Arundel family, I think
it would do us well to examine the text of the Lewes Priory document
which Brad Verity has cited as in his post as "evidence" that Alice
Arundel was the eldest surviving daughter of her parents.
The published transcript of this document reads as follows:
"Richard [de Arundel] the second beforenamed took to wife Elizabeth
daughter to Sir William Boun Earl of Northampton and by her begot
three sons Richard William and Thomas and four daughters Alice
Elizabeth Joan and Margaret. Richard and William the elder sons died
soon after their father who ceased to live 21 September, which was
Friday and the day of St. Mathew the Apostle, 1397, and so the
inheritance remained to the youngest son Thomas who took to wife Lady
Beatrice daughter of the most puissant Lord Sir John King of Portugal
and Algarbe. Alice was married to Sir John Charleton Lord de Powys.
Elizabeth and Joan were born at one time. Elizabeth was married to
Sir Thomas Segrave Earl of Nottingham and Marshal of England who
afterwards became Duke of Norfolk. And Joan was married to Sir
William Beuchampe Lord de Burgeuieny and brother to Sir Thomas
Beuchampe Earl of Warwyke. Margaret was married to a right valiant
knight Sir Roland Leythale." END OF QUOTE. [Reference: L.F. Salzman,
Chartulary of the Priory of St. Pancras of Lewes 2 (Sussex Rec. Soc.
40) (1934): 19–21].
First thing I notice is that at least one daughter, Eleanor Arundel,
is missing from the list of children. From other sources we know that
Eleanor married on or about 28 Oct. 1371 Robert de Ufford, and that
she died without issue about 1375. Second, we are told by the
document that the daughter, Elizabeth Arundel, married Sir Thomas
Segrave, which is a wild error for Sir Thomas Mowbray. In fact,
Elizabeth actually had four husbands in all, three of whom are
completely ignored. Next, I note that the daughters are listed as
Alice, Elizabeth, Joan, and Margaret. But, Alice is no where called
the first born daughter (where did Brad find that?).
I find this document much too spurious to give it much credence. I
certainly would not use it to conclude that Alice Arundel was the
eldest daughter of this family. Other documentation must be used to
determine Alice's place in the birth order of this family.
Responsible methodology requires a more stringent standard of evidence
than provided in the Lewes Chartulary document.
Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah
bat...@hotmail.com (Brad Verity) wrote in message news:<8ed1b63.04030...@posting.google.com>...
Richard Smyth at Road Runner
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Smyth at Road Runner" <sm...@nc.rr.com>
To: "Douglas Richardson" <royala...@msn.com>;
<GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 8:37 AM
Subject: Re: The IPM of Joan Stradling
>
> > and four daughters Alice Elizabeth Joan and Margaret.
>
> Can one exclude the possibility that they were being named in alphabetical
> order? (There is a probability question lurking here.)
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Smyth
> sm...@nc.rr.com
>
Richard Smyth at Road Runner
> and four daughters Alice Elizabeth Joan and Margaret.
Can one exclude the possibility that they were being named in alphabetical
Brad Verity
> I find this document much too spurious to give it much credence. I
> certainly would not use it to conclude that Alice Arundel was the
> eldest daughter of this family. Other documentation must be used to
> determine Alice's place in the birth order of this family.
> Responsible methodology requires a more stringent standard of evidence
> than provided in the Lewes Chartulary document.
Douglas,
I'll be happy to go into my whole methodology in detail. But first, I
want to ask you - where would you place Alice in the birth order of
the Arundels?
For expediency, as I know this is a difficult source to track down
(luckily, the UCLA Library had it), here are the relevant excerpts
from "The History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel;
including the Biography of its Earls, from the Conquest to the Present
Time" by Rev. M.A. Tierney, F.S.A., Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of
Norfolk; Volume I. London: G. and W. Nicol, Pall Mall; 1834.
From Pedigree:
"Richard, named first in his father's will, and called his heir (Royal
and Noble Wills, p. 129.): ob. S.P.
"THOMAS FITZALAN, fifteenth EARL OF ARUNDEL, and Earl of Surrey, K.G.
born Oct. 13, 1381 (MS. Ashm. 8467), restored in 1399 (Rot. Parl. III.
425), ob. S.P. Oct. 13, 1415; buried at Arundel. Rot. Lewes.
"WILLIAM, died before his father, S.P. Regist.Lewes. 132.
"ELIZABETH, born in 1372 (Esch. 4 Hen. 5.), married, first, to William
Montacute, eldest son of William, Earl of Salisbury; secondly, to
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; thirdly, to Sir Gerard Ufflete, Knt.;
fourthly, to Sir Rob. Goushill, of Hoveringham, Notts. Dugd. Bar. I.
320. ob. 1425.
"JOAN, born in 1375, (Esch. 4 Hen. 5), married William Beauchamp, Lord
Bergavenny (Esch. 14 Hen. 6. No.35.), ob. 1435.
"MARGARET, born in 1386 (Esch. 4 Hen. 5.), married, first, to Sir
Rowland Lenthall (Esch. 1 Hen. 6.), and secondly, to ----- Tresham, of
Northampt. ob. 1483, aet. 97. Esch. 1 Ric. 3. No. 43.
"ALICE, married to John Charlton, Lord Powys, but died S.P. before
1416. Regist. Lewes. 132."
From p. 270 [describing the earl of Arundel's will]: "To the same
person [his very dear wife Philippa] he gives the great suit of
hangings lately made in London of blue tapestry, and ornamented with
red roses intermixed with the arms of himself and of his three sons,
the Earl Marshal, the Lord Charleton, and Monsieur William Beauchamp
[footnote: The Earl Marshal, was Thomas, Lord Mowbray, afterwards Duke
of Norfolk, second husband of the Earl's eldest daughter, Elizabeth:
the Lord Charleton was John Charleton, Lord Powis, who married the
youngest daughter, Alice: and William Beauchamp was Lord Bergavenny,
who espoused Joan, the second daughter.]"
From p. 275: "The Earl of Arundel was twice married. His first wife,
to whom he was united in 1359, about the thirteenth year of his age,
was Elizabeth, daughter of William de Bohun, Earl of Northampton: by
her he had issue, three sons and four daughters,---Richard and
William, who died before him, Thomas, who succeeded him in the
earldom, Elizabeth, Joan, Margaret, and Alice, who all married into
distinguished families. [footnote: Dugd. Bar. I. 320. For the several
marriages of these daughters see the genealogical table.]"
Cheers, ----Brad
Richard Smith
Douglas Richardson chides Brad Verity writing: "Responsible methodology
requires a more stringent tandard of evidence than provided in the Lewes
Chartulary document." He says that he finds "this document much too spurious
to give it much credence."
Responsible scholarship requires a more careful standard of English usage
than that used by Douglas Richardson. A document may be factually actuate,
yet spurious; one may be inacurate, but a true document. A spurious document
is one that is illegitimate, false, inauthentic; not proceeding from the
true or claimed source; not genuine. In his posting, Douglas Richard makes
no such claim with respect to the Lewes Chartulary. He claims that it is
incomplete. The term "spurious" is inappropriately used in this instance.
Moreover, Douglas Richardson says that the document is "much too spurious to
give it much credence." Either a document is authentic or it is spurious,
neither term lending itself to comparison. A document cannot be too spurious
or less spurious. Clearly he is using a term which he does not understand.
Maybe we should not expect more of a "trained" historian; but we know a true
historian by his ability to use language to transmit history; being
"educated," he can do so.
We have already learned not to expect Douglas to handle French or Latin
adequately; with this and other examples which could be proffered, we also
have doubts as to his ability to use English.
Richard D. Smith
----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Richardson" <royala...@msn.com>
To: <GEN-MED...@rootsweb.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 3:38 AM
Subject: Re: The IPM of Joan Stradling
> Dear Newsgroup ~
>
> While everyone is patting themselves on the back and issuing
> statements of certain knowledge regarding the Arundel family, I think
> it would do us well to examine the text of the Lewes Priory document
> which Brad Verity has cited as in his post as "evidence" that Alice
> Arundel was the eldest surviving daughter of her parents.
>
> The published transcript of this document reads as follows:
>
> "Richard [de Arundel] the second beforenamed took to wife Elizabeth
> daughter to Sir William Boun Earl of Northampton and by her begot
> three sons Richard William and Thomas and four daughters Alice
> Elizabeth Joan and Margaret. Richard and William the elder sons died
> soon after their father who ceased to live 21 September, which was
> Friday and the day of St. Mathew the Apostle, 1397, and so the
> inheritance remained to the youngest son Thomas who took to wife Lady
> Beatrice daughter of the most puissant Lord Sir John King of Portugal
> and Algarbe. Alice was married to Sir John Charleton Lord de Powys.
> Elizabeth and Joan were born at one time. Elizabeth was married to
> Sir Thomas Segrave Earl of Nottingham and Marshal of England who
> afterwards became Duke of Norfolk. And Joan was married to Sir
> William Beuchampe Lord de Burgeuieny and brother to Sir Thomas
> Beuchampe Earl of Warwyke. Margaret was married to a right valiant
> knight Sir Roland Leythale." END OF QUOTE. [Reference: L.F. Salzman,
> Chartulary of the Priory of St. Pancras of Lewes 2 (Sussex Rec. Soc.
> 40) (1934): 19-21].
Mayt...@aol.com
writes:
> "ELIZABETH, born in 1372 (Esch. 4 Hen. 5.), married, first, to William
> Montacute, eldest son of William, Earl of Salisbury; secondly, to
> Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; thirdly, to Sir Gerard Ufflete, Knt.;
> fourthly, to Sir Rob. Goushill, of Hoveringham, Notts. Dugd. Bar. I.
> 320. ob. 1425.
>
> "JOAN, born in 1375, (Esch. 4 Hen. 5), married William Beauchamp, Lord
> Bergavenny (Esch. 14 Hen. 6. No.35.), ob. 1435
So, there goes another myth - Elizabeth and Joan were NOT twins as previously
stated.
Rose
Peter Stewart
No, Rose - you might like to read Brad Verity's post again with more
care: he was providing the relevant material from a 19th-century
historian, M.A. Tierney, as a reference for discussion, but this should
NOT be taken as the perfect authority on the question.
Brad is careful and responsible, and does not make statements that he
can't or won't support in his very next post on any subject.
On the other hand, Douglas Richardson has described a source written
during the lifetime of the following generation as "spurious", and
implied that deduction from it (that may be backed up from elsewhere) is
methodologically irresponsible, as if he knows something about this that
the editors of the Lewes priory charters and other readers do not. He,
of course, now has the collegial responsibility to say exactly why so,
as he has been asked to do.
Meanwhile, no "myths" have been destroyed by Tierney, who has been on
the accessible record via CP anyway.
Peter Stewart
Douglas Richardson
I've seen the Tierney book and I'm aware of its statements regarding
the ages of the Arundel daughters which Tierney indicates are taken
from "Esch. 4 Hen. 5." I presume that Mr. Tierney derived the ages of
the three Arundel girls from an inquisition post mortem of their
brother, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1415. The Public Record
Office catalogue shows that there were several inquisitions taken
following Thomas' death, the first of which are dated 4 Henry V as
shown below:
C 138/23/54 Arundel, Thomas, Earl of: Norf, Glos, Essex, Herts, Berks,
Salop and the marches of Wales, Sussex, Surrey, Wilts 4 Hen V
C 138/35/49 Arundel, Thomas, Earl of: Sussex 6 Hen V
C 138/53/108 Arundel, Thomas, Earl of: Sussex 8 Hen V
C 139/25/40 Arundel, Thomas [Fitzalan], late Earl of: Sussex 4 Hen VI
I presume you have seen one or more of these documents. If so, do
they agree with Mr. Tierney's statements? Mr. Tierney gives a three
year age difference between the Arundel sisters, Elizabeth and Joan,
evidently based on at least one of these documents, yet I note you
state that the inquisitions post mortem for Thomas, Earl of Arundel,
all give the same age for Elizabeth and Joan. Is Mr. Tierney wrong?
In any event, the ages for Elizabeth and Joan indicated by their
brother Thomas's various IPM's would surely be an addition for
Complete Peerage sub Abergavenny and Norfolk, neither of which account
provides birthdates for these two women. The omission of birthdates
for Elizabeth and Joan Arundel is unusual to say the least, as both
were important women in their day.
Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah
bat...@hotmail.com (Brad Verity) wrote in message news:<8ed1b63.04030...@posting.google.com>...
> Douglas,
>
> For expediency, as I know this is a difficult source to track down
> (luckily, the UCLA Library had it), here are the relevant excerpts
> from "The History and Antiquities of the Castle and Town of Arundel;
> including the Biography of its Earls, from the Conquest to the Present
> Time" by Rev. M.A. Tierney, F.S.A., Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of
> Norfolk; Volume I. London: G. and W. Nicol, Pall Mall; 1834.
>
> From Pedigree:
>
> "Richard, named first in his father's will, and called his heir (Royal
> and Noble Wills, p. 129.): ob. S.P.
>
> "THOMAS FITZALAN, fifteenth EARL OF ARUNDEL, and Earl of Surrey, K.G.
> born Oct. 13, 1381 (MS. Ashm. 8467), restored in 1399 (Rot. Parl. III.
> 425), ob. S.P. Oct. 13, 1415; buried at Arundel. Rot. Lewes.
>
> "WILLIAM, died before his father, S.P. Regist.Lewes. 132.
>
> "ELIZABETH, born in 1372 (Esch. 4 Hen. 5.), married, first, to William
> Montacute, eldest son of William, Earl of Salisbury; secondly, to
> Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk; thirdly, to Sir Gerard Ufflete, Knt.;
> fourthly, to Sir Rob. Goushill, of Hoveringham, Notts. Dugd. Bar. I.
> 320. ob. 1425.
>
> "JOAN, born in 1375, (Esch. 4 Hen. 5), married William Beauchamp, Lord
> Bergavenny (Esch. 14 Hen. 6. No.35.), ob. 1435.
>
> "MARGARET, born in 1386 (Esch. 4 Hen. 5.), married, first, to Sir
> Rowland Lenthall (Esch. 1 Hen. 6.), and secondly, to ----- Tresham, of
> Northampt. ob. 1483, aet. 97. Esch. 1 Ric. 3. No. 43.
>
> > Cheers, ----Brad
Gryphon801
the recently published CIPM 20 [nos. 654-71]. Elizabeth and Joan are placed in
the same age category, varying from 30 years and more to 44 years and more
[Essex, No. 661] while Margaret is younger.
Brad Verity
> I've seen the Tierney book and I'm aware of its statements regarding
> the ages of the Arundel daughters which Tierney indicates are taken
> from "Esch. 4 Hen. 5."
Then why, in your list of sources after the potted biography of Joan
Beaufort/Edward Stradling in your PA3 manuscript extract that you
posted on February 1st, do you say:
"M.A. Tierney, Hist. & Antiq. of the Castle and Town of Arundel
(1834): 192-193 (not seen)."
> I presume that Mr. Tierney derived the ages of
> the three Arundel girls from an inquisition post mortem of their
> brother, Thomas, Earl of Arundel, who died in 1415.
I don't know, it would seem so. In 1834, nothing was translated into
English and abstracted. Tierney saw the original Lewes Chartulary,
since that wasn't translated and published until 1934 - 100 years
later. None of the Rolls series had been published in 1834, either.
[snip]
> I presume you have seen one or more of these documents.
Yes.
> If so, do
> they agree with Mr. Tierney's statements?
No.
> Mr. Tierney gives a three
> year age difference between the Arundel sisters, Elizabeth and Joan,
> evidently based on at least one of these documents, yet I note you
> state that the inquisitions post mortem for Thomas, Earl of Arundel,
> all give the same age for Elizabeth and Joan. Is Mr. Tierney wrong?
Yes. From the IPMS (many thanks to Rosie Bevan, our IPM guru):
London 28 March 1416 "Elizabeth duchess of Norfolk, Joan Beauchamp,
Margaret Arundell, all aged 30 years and more."
Kent 6 April 1416 "Elizabeth duchess of Norfolk, wife of Gerard
Ufflete, knight, aged 30 years and more; Joan lady Abergavenny, aged
30 years and more; and Margaret wife of Roland Lenthale, knight, aged
24 years and more."
Norfolk 23 Apr 1416 "Elizabeth and Joan, each aged 40 years and more,
and Margaret 30 years and more."
Essex 2 Nov 1415 "Elizabeth duchess of Norfolk, wife of Gerard
Ufflete, knight, Joan de Beauchamp, lady Abergavenny, both aged 44
years and more, and Margaret wife of Roland Leynthale, knight, aged 30
years and more."
Surrey 1415-6 "Heirs as above, Elizabeth and Joan, aged 40 years
years, Margaret aged 32 years."
> In any event, the ages for Elizabeth and Joan indicated by their
> brother Thomas's various IPM's would surely be an addition for
> Complete Peerage sub Abergavenny and Norfolk, neither of which account
> provides birthdates for these two women. The omission of birthdates
> for Elizabeth and Joan Arundel is unusual to say the least, as both
> were important women in their day.
Perhaps because they vary so widely in the IPMs, CP wasn't sure which
to use. Clearly the oldest ages for the twins returned - that of 44
years and more in Nov. 1415 - is the most accurate , since Elizabeth
gave birth to her first child - Thomas Mowbray - in September 1385.
You still haven't answered the Alice question - where would you place
her in the Arundel daughter birth order?
Cheers, ------Brad