Many thanks to those of you who spotted a missing ‘great’ in the previous post. Elizabeth Grey who married Edmund Dudley was Margaret Beauchamp’s great grand daughter , rather than grand daughter. The family tree is at the front of The Son that Elizabeth I Never Had for those of you who would like a closer look but I have set it out here in simple format.

Margaret Beauchamp = John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shewsbury

John Talbot, 1st Viscount Lisle = Joan Cheddar

Elizabeth Talbot = Edward Grey

Elizabeth Grey = first to Edmund Dudley and secondly to Edward IV’s illegitimate son, Arthur Plantagenet who became Baron Lisle by right of his wife.

Joan Cheddar was something of an heiress in her own right when she married John Talbot who was Margaret Beauchamp’s fourth son (though one elder brother died in infancy). When Thomas Cheddar, Joan’s father, died in 1442 (ish) he left two daughters, Joan and Isabel, who became co-heiresses to his estates. Their mother, Isabel Scobahull, outlived her spouse by about 30 years – so was entitled to her dower rights of that length of time as well as any jointure lands that the pair held together. Her brass, in Cheddar Church, was described by the Somerset Archeological and Natural History Society. Joan Cheddar’s monument can be found in the south transept of Wells Cathedral while her sister Isabel is interred in Yatton Church, Somerset.

Margaret Beauchamp’s mother Elizabeth de Berkeley, suo jure Baroness Lisle, (through her mother’s inheritance) gained her father’s estates thanks to a dodgy legal manoeuvre by her father, Thomas 5th Baron Berkeley. In 1417, about five years before his death, he placed his possessions in the hands of trustees – or feoffees – which meant that in 1422 when he died, his only surviving legitimate child, Elizabeth de Berkeley, the first wife of 13th Earl of Warwick was able to inherit the estates even if her cousin, James Berkeley, the son of Thomas’s brother, inherited the title. The feud between the two cousins and their families was bitter and protracted. Legal disputes gave way to drawn swords.

The barony of Lisle fell into abeyance despite the fact that it should have been inherited by Margaret Beauchamp as the eldest of Elizabeth de Berkeley’s three daughters – and the estates associated with the barony became entangled in the Berkeley dispute. The title was resurrected by King Henry VI for Margaret’s fourth son, John Talbot, in 1444. Margaret Beauchamp and her Talbot kin never ceased to promote her claim to the Berkeley estates.

John Talbot, Viscount Lisle died beside his father, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, at the disastrous Battle of Castillon in 1453. It is unknown where he is buried. His father’s remains were later returned to England.