Thank you so much!
I apologise for posting the fifth and sixth snippet before the fourth was transcribed. I did not realise. I have so much respect for the wonderful work you do here.
Ordinarily, I would agree with you entirely. However, it would appear that many of those pedigrees are based on a wrongly transcribed version of this will.
I think I just found that transcription. At first I felt my stomach sinking that you had all gone to this trouble for me when it apparently was out there all along after all, it had just weirdly not shown up in any of my searches. But sometimes I really think that there is a guiding force helping us in our enquiries
Because when I read the actual transcription I realised that that transcription was not this transcription ... Furthermore, it appears to through some weird printing error to have been intermixed with another will (!), which would account for some of the weird errouneous information out there.
For instance, in one of summaries I had found, it said that the will had been written in 1521, even a date was given. As we can see from the above, this is of course entirely wrong. If the will had been written in 1521, or I had wrongly assumed it to be so, this would naturally have had great consequences for who would have been born when, been dead and married by when.
It struck me as odd, given that the wills from this period so rarely have dates and usually were written after the testator had become ill with their final illness.
Of course, there are exceptions, but something was just ... off.
Most sources seem to agree that Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquis of Dorset, and Margaret Wotton had four sons and four daughters, while some will allow them only the three daughters well-known to history.
The life of Henry Grey (husband to Frances Brandon and father of Jane Grey), eldest son, 3rd Marquis of Dorset and later Duke of Suffolk, of younger son Thomas and of fourth son John are fairly well-documented. Being implicated in high treason will do that for you
The fourth son is variously named Leonard or Edward, depending on where you look, and is referred to as being deceased before the failed attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne.
Furthermore, there is agreement that Lady Elizabeth Grey, the wife Thomas Audley, 1st Baron Audley of Walden, Lady Katherine Grey, the wife of Henry FitzAlan, 19th Earl of Arundel, and Lady Anne Grey, the wife of Sir Henry Willoughby, were all three the daughters of Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquis of Dorset and Margaret Wotton.
Their names are usually given in the above order, and I have seen Katherine referred to as the second daughter and Anne as the third.
However, all available evidence suggests that Elizabeth must be the youngest of those three.
She married in 1538. The groom had just been widowed a few short months earlier, so the marriage could not have been the result of a lengthy betrothal either.
Katherine was married at least by 1532, at which point she was styled as Lady Maltravers, and Anne was 'married by agreement dated 20 Sept. 1528'.
I have seen this described as a settlement elsewhere, but I think that was simply an extrapolation of the above information.
A settlement would imply cohabitation, but if the above contract was a betrothal agreement for instance instead, that would have implications for how old we can assume Anne to be at time.
A Mary is also usually listed. I did find her name in a book which seemed pretty reliable
The order they are listed in that book is Mary, Katherine, Elizabeth and Anne.
But even if we accept Mary as the eldest sister (she could have died as an infant, a child, or just young), Anne's place in the order still does not make sense in that she was married first, and she is still not the third sister as per the other source.
Elizabeth is usually always listed first of the sisters, but that could simply be because she is the most well-known in our day and age due to the fact that she was the subject of a lovely miniature by Holbein.
So I am searching for possible clues to birth order of the sisters, mainly
But also to settle what name the second or third Grey son actually had.
I also had great hopes that Mary could have been a misreading Margaret, that the abbreviation 'Marg.' had been used in some document or letter or another. Handwritten, this could have been easily mistook for 'Mary'.
Because a 'Lady Margaret Grey' is well-documented. She first appears as a receiver of a New Year's gift from Henry VIII in 1534. She must have been quite an important lady, because she was also in the second chariot as one of the 29 female mourners in the procession at Queen Jane Seymour's funeral.
I am starting to wonder, however, if that Lady Margaret Grey is Margaret Wotton, Marchioness of Dorset. She would have been known under her married name in her own time, of course. Because in 1534, there would have been another Marchioness of Dorset, Lady Frances Brandon, Henry VIII own niece. Her husband would not ascend to the title of Duke of Suffolk making her a duchess until nearly two decades later, after the death of Frances's father and brothers.
I am not entirely satisfied with this theory either, however, as I do not understand why they would not simply be referred to as 'the old Marchioness' and 'the new/young Marchioness' as I have seen elsewhere in lists of New Year's gifts from the King.
