On 15/05/16 21:02, Richard Smith wrote: > The will was written in September 1401 and refers to Joan as Lady Bryan, > implying she had not remarried, That doesn't necessarily follow. Constance Sutton married 3 times. In her IPM she was Lady de Mauley (or equivalent - without chasing up the exact quote). In other words she was afforded the title of her first husband. -- Hotmail is my spam bin. Real address is ianng at austonley org uk

On 16/05/16 09:45, Ian Goddard wrote: > On 15/05/16 21:02, Richard Smith wrote: >> The will was written in September 1401 and refers to Joan as Lady Bryan, >> implying she had not remarried, > > That doesn't necessarily follow. Constance Sutton married 3 times. In > her IPM she was Lady de Mauley (or equivalent - without chasing up the > exact quote). In other words she was afforded the title of her first > husband. That one doesn't surprise me. Her first husband was a baron, while the latter two were knights. In modern usage, she would continue to be the Dowager Baroness Mauley only until she married; she'd only continue to use the title after remarriage if she married a peer of lower rank, which isn't possible for a baroness. However I get the impression that historically things were less rigid, so I'm not especially surprised to discover Constance continuing to use the senior title from her first marriage. Half a century earlier, Elizabeth de Clare reverted to calling herself "de Clare" after her third widowhood. In that case, her first marriage to the Earl of Ulster was the senior title, but it was her Clare inheritance that made her the richest woman in the country and a first cousin of the king. However I'm not sure any of these considerations applies in my case. William Bryan and William Echyngham were both knights, and I don't get the impression that the William Bryan family was more wealthy or influential than William Echyngham. It's certainly a possibility that Joan may have been called Lady Bryan after her subsequent remarriage, but it's enough of a red flag that I want to assess the evidence very carefully. Right at the moment I have no contemporary or near-contemporary evidence that William Echyngham's wife Joan was the same person as John Arundel's daughter Joan. Richard