The identity of Sir Thomas Swynnerton's wife, once thought to be solidly known, is now open to speculation. Sir Thomas and Maude are widely beleived to have also had a daughter - Alice - who m. Sir John Gresley, from whom many Americans trace their noble descent. For those individuals, as well as those of Swynnerton descent, the following discussion is of vital import: . . . ntaylor@@fas.harvard.edu (NathanielTaylor) posted to GEN-MEDIEVAL on 21 Feb 1998, Subject: Gresley/Swinnerton: . . . "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: . . . 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."