Margaret Courtenay (aft. 1417)

Born after 1417 in Devon, England

Imaginary Person

Theobald Grenville is reported, in the 1620 Cornwall Visitation, to have married Margaret Courtenay, daughter of "Hugh Courtenay." This Hugh Courtenay is logically presumed to have been the 2nd Earl of Devon, who had a surplus of unmarried younger daughters. Unfortunately, three centuries later, an alternative supposition was made, that Margaret Courtenay was the daughter of Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe.

However, Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe, born around 1358, didn't marry his first wife until 1386, and the two sons of Theobald Grenville (John and William) were both born by 1380, if not well before. The idea that Hugh Courtenay had a daughter Margaret who married Theobald Grenville is not only groundless but absurd. There is no evidence that Hugh Courtenay every had a daughter Margaret.^[1] Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe had no surviving children by his first two wives, and his third wife had a single heiress, Joan. This means that the only possible mother of a daughter Margaret would be Hugh's fourth wife Maud Beaumont.

Respectable Sources

Unfortunately, some respectable sources have perpetrated the false assumption that Theobald Grenville was the son-in-law of Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe. The Courtenay pedigree in Vivivan's Visitations of Cornwall (1887), p. 107 (see chart) stated incorrectly that Margaret Courtenay, daughter of Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe, was the wife of Theobald Grenville. Vivian actually contradicted this in the Grenvile pedigree on page 190 of the same work, showing that Theobald's wife was Margaret Courtenay, daughter of Hugh Courtenay, "Earl of Devon".

Roskell's History of Parliament likewise gives two contradictory statements. Its profile of William Bonville wrongly states that Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe was William Grenville's grandfather.^[2] However, its profile of William Grenville's elder brother John states that Hugh Courtenay, 10th Earl of Devon was John Grenville's maternal grandfather. ^[3]

Douglas Richardson, in Plantagenet Ancestry (2004), and later in Magna Carta Ancestry (2011), followed Vivian's and Roskell's error in supposing that Theobald Grenville's wife Margaret Courtenay was the daughter of Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe.^[4][5]

The confusing identity of Margaret Courtenay, wife of Theobald Grenville, was discussed at length at a forum for medeival genealogists on this thread(1) and this post and this thread(2).

Sources

1. ↑ The impossibility of Margaret Courtenay, wife of Theobald Grenville, being the daughter of Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe is also discussed at the Wikipedia page for Hugh Courtenay of Haccombe.
2. ↑ * J.S. Roskell & L. Clarke & C. Rawcliffe, C., "BONVILLE, Sir William II (1392-1461), of Chewton-Mendip, Som. and Shute, Devon," in History of Parliament (1993), online at [1].
3. ↑ J.S. Roskell & L. Clarke & C. Rawcliffe, C., "GRENVILLE, Sir John (d.1412), of Stow in Kilkhampton, Cornw. and Bideford, Devon," in History of Parliament (1993), online at [2].
4. ↑ Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry (2004), p. 240.
5. ↑ Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, 2nd Edition, Vol. I, pp. 547-548.