M Souch

«A portrait drawing of a woman, possibly Mary Zouch, who served as a lady-in-waiting to Queen Jane Seymour. A bust length portrait facing to the front. She wears a necklace and medallion, and holds a flower. Annotated by the artist on the bodice: black felbet (black velvet). Inscribed in an eighteenth-century hand at upper left: M Souch. Annotated by the artist on the bodice: black felbet (black velvet). The inscription possibly identifies the sitter as Mary Zouch, who became lady-in-waiting to Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour. It has also been suggested that it shows Anne Gainsford, lady-in-waiting to the King’s second wife Anne Boleyn, whose married name was Zouche. Holbein paid careful attention to the sitter’s dress, noting that her bodice was of black velvet (‘felbet’) and recording the ornament on her headdress.»

My suggestion is that she instead was Elizabeth Stanley, the daughter of Mary Monteagle and the granddaughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. She married a Richard Zouche, and would thus have been known to John Cheke as Mistress Zouche.

Furthermore, this is clearly a picture of a very young girl. Both Mary Zouche and Anne Gainsborough would have been around 30 in the 1540s when this sketch was drawn. I date the sketch to that time due to the French hood.

This type of French hood appears to have been only fashionable around then. I have only found the two sketches by Holbein (no portraits), showing this specific kind, and the second one can be firmly dated to the 1540s due to the Lady Parker wearing a partlet with a raised collar, which had only become fashionable then.

Burke lists Elizabeth first of the sisters, indicating that she was the eldest daughter. Her parents married sometime between 1524 and 1529. This puts her at the perfect age for being the girl in this sketch, who is clearly in her teens. 

MARY BRANDON (1510-1541+)

Mary Brandon was the younger daughter of Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk (1485-August 22,1545) by Anne Browne (d. 1510). She married Thomas Stanley, 2nd baron Mounteagle (May 25,1507-August 15,1560), possibly in 1524, when her father made a gift of jewelry to them both. It included an egg of diamonds with ninety great pearls, a lace of twenty-three rubies, a partlet with seventeen diamonds and two rubies, another partlet of nineteen score pearls, and a chain that was at that time in the keeping of the countess of Worcester. The total value of the gift was reckoned at £523. Douglas Richardson, in Magna Carta Ancestry, suggests a later date, between June 2, 1527 and 1529. With Mounteagle, Mary was the mother of William, 3rd baron (1527-November 10,1581), Elizabeth, Margaret, Anne, and George. Richardson lists the sons as William, Francis, and Charles. In the 1530s, Mary was almost constantly at court. In 1538, Mounteagle complained of misbehavior on his wife’s part to Thomas Cromwell but nothing seems to have come of the allegations. Mary was a favorite lady in waiting to Jane Seymour. She died before 1544. Portraits: the drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger labeled “The Lady Montegle.”

The Will of Anne Spencer, Baroness Monteagle – Mary Brandon's daughter-in-law

Stanley – Barons Monteagle

Possibly Elizabeth Stanley, Mistress Zouche, the daughter of Mary Monteagle and the granddaughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk

Possibly Elizabeth Stanley, Mistress Zouche, the daughter of Mary Monteagle and the granddaughter of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk

Burke's description of him as «Richard Zouche, of Staffordel, in the country of Somerset» appear to be a misreading or a misunderstanding, because the History of Parliament Online's page for Sir William Stanley, 3rd Baron Monteagle (1528-81), Elizabeth's brother, describes him as «Monteagle’s brother-in-law Richard Zouche of Stavordale, Somerset», and this small but in important difference makes it clear that he is probably connected to the Barons Zouche of Haryngworth, who hailed from there.

In fact, he appears to have been a younger son of Richard la Zouche, 9th Baron Zouche of Haryngworth (d. 1552). That would make him a nephew of the Mary Zouche whom the sketch has long been identified as.

That would make him a most proper match for Elizabeth too, the son of a baron and the daughter of a baron.

Perhaps not an impressive match for the granddaughter of a duke, but the «Monteagle inheritance itself was not a very rich one: it has been classed in the next to lowest of eight income-groupings of the peerage in 1559» according the History of Parliament page for her brother.

The match is a matter of historical record, however, and if her friends and family thought it good enough for her, it must be good enough for us.

In any case, his father tried to provide well for him. He was left half of the manors of Wincanton and Pitcombe, and half the rent for Bridgwater: Borough.

MARY ZOUCHE (c.1512-1542+)

Mary Zouche was the daughter of John Zouche, 8th baron Zouche of Harringworth (c.1486-August 10, 1550) and his first wife, Dorothy Capell. In about 1527, she wrote to her cousin, Sir John Arundell of Lanherne (Mary’s grandmother was Margaret Arundell, Sir John’s aunt), asking to be taken into royal service because her new stepmother (Susan Welby) was cruel to her. The letter was probably written before 1529. It is dated only “at Notwell, the 8th day of October.” Mary was at court as a maid of honor, possibly to Catherine of Aragon and certainly to Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour. She is the “Mrs. Souche” who was given jeweled borders by Queen Jane and attended Jane’s funeral. In 1537, Mary was granted an annuity of £10 for her services to the late queen. It was to continue until she married. She was still receiving it in 1542. A number of accounts say Mary never wed, but the will of Robert Burbage of Hayes Park Hall, Middlesex (d. 1575), identifies his late wife as “the eldest daughter of John Zouche, knight, Lord Zouche, Saint Maur and Cantelupe.” It would appear that they married shortly after the payment of her annuity in 1542, when Mary was about thirty. They had one daughter, Anne, who married William Goring of Barton, Sussex (d.1601) in 1563. Burbage’s will, dated July 1, 1575 and proved October 15, 1575, instructed that his tomb include Mary’s arms and he also left a bequest of ten pounds to Marie Pigott, for her faithful service to his wife “when she was alive and to him since her mistress’s death.” Portrait: Although the “M” in “M. Souch” could be an abbreviation for “Mistress” rather than “Mary,” or indicate that the likeness is of Margaret Cheney, second wife of Richard, 9th baron Zouche, it is far more likely that Mary Zouche is the subject of the Holbein sketch at Windsor.

http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-53-192.pdf

ANNE GAINSFORD or GAYNSFORD (d. before 1548)

Anne Gainsford was said by John Foxe, author of the Book of Martyrs, to be the daughter of John Gainsford of Crowhurst, Surrey. John Gainsford, also of Guildford, Surrey (1467-October 28, 1540) had six wives. Anne was the daughter of the second, Anne Hawte or Haute (1473-1508) and was likely born between 1495 and 1501. Foxe further states, giving his source as John Lowthe, archdeacon of Nottingham, who had spent the early part of his career in the Zouche household, that Anne Gainsford, as yet unmarried, was a member of Anne Boleyn’s household as early as 1528. She was in possession of her mistress’s copy of William Tyndale’s The Obedience of the Christian Man, a book deemed heretical by Cardinal Wolsey, when Anne Boleyn’s equerry, George Zouche, who was courting Anne Gainsford, filched it. Having begun to read, he refused to return it, and he was caught by the dean of the Chapel Royal, who reported the matter to Wolsey. According to George Wyatt, who wrote the first biography of Anne Boleyn c.1590, Anne Gainsford herself recounted this incident to him, but there is some doubt about that claim, given the probable date of her death. The story goes that around the time Anne Boleyn became queen, Anne Gainsford married George Zouche, who then became a gentleman pensioner to the king. Later, as Anne Zouche, Anne was obliged to testify against Queen Anne. George Zouche is Sir George Zouche of Codnor (c.1494-1557). Some online genealogies have George Zouche married to Anne Gainsford well before 1528 and taking a second wife in 1526. Others date their children’s births from 1523-1535 and have George remarry in 1536. Mary S. Lovell in her biography of Bess of Hardwick (Bess was raised in Lady Zouche’s household at Codnor Castle) says that Anne Gainsford was a lady in waiting to both Anne Boleyn and Jane Seymour before her marriage. This would place their marriage in 1536 or later. However, S. T. Bindoff, ed, in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1509-1558, in the entry for John Zouche (August 27, 1534-June 19, 1586), states that he was the first son of George and Anne. The correct chronology appears to be that Anne and George married c.1533. Their first child was John, but after that matters once again become confused. Anne may be the mother of seven additional children (including William, George, Lucy, Anne, Margaret, and Francis). George’s second wife, Helena Lane (d.1560) is usually credited with eleven more. Anne had died by July 16, 1548, when George made his will and named his wife as Ellen. According to a family tree drawn in 1550 and showing all eleven children of the second marriage, the Eleanor and Bridget mentioned in the will belong to Helena, thus moving the date Anne died even earlier. Portrait: If the Holbein sketch of M. Souch at Windsor is not Mary Zouche, then it is probably Anne Gainsford.

http://www.tudorwomen.com/?page_id=677

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Gainsford

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Zouche_(died_1585)

https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/zouche-john-i-1515-85

Mary Zouche would have been known to John Cheke as «Mistress Burbage». 

Equally, Anne Gainsford would have been known to him as «Lady Zouche».

There is both a «Mistress» and a «Lady» Zouche on the list of New Year's gifts in 1534, indicating that both ladies were at court at the same time that year.

Mary Zouche appears to have left court after the death of Queen Jane Seymour and being granted her annuity, as she does not appear on any subsequent list over New Year's gifts.

In 1551 Richard, then Baron Zouche (d. 1552), settled the manor on his wife and two younger sons, Richard and Charles Zouche, in tail male.

The rent of the remaining two thirds of the borough, occasionally called a fee farm, (fn. 8) belonged to the Zouche share of Haygrove manor until 1485. (fn. 9) Giles Daubeney, Baron Daubeney (d. 1508), was succeeded by his son Henry (cr. earl of Bridgwater 1538, d. 1548). Henry retained the rent from the borough until 1544 or later, but by 1547 it was being paid to Richard Zouche (succ. as Baron Zouche in 1550, d. 1552). (fn. 10) Richard settled the rent, then amounting to £10 16s. 8d., on his two younger sons, Richard and Charles. Richard conveyed his share in 1558 to his eldest brother George, Lord Zouche (d. 1569). (fn. 11) George's share was paid to his widow Margaret 1572-7 and in 1578 to his son Edward, Lord Zouche (d. 1625). (fn. 12) Charles Zouche in 1566-7 received his share, which by 1572 had passed to John Byflete. (fn. 13) Byflete was succeeded in 1621 by his son Robert, and Robert in 1641 by his son Thomas. Thomas's heirs were paid in arrears in 1652 (fn. 14) but no further payments have been traced.

In 1547 the manor was in the possession of John Zouche's grandson Richard Zouche (d. 1552) like Wincanton and Stavordale, although Richard's father John was said to hold it on his death in 1550. (fn. 51) Richard settled the manor on his two younger sons Richard and Charles. (fn. 52) They sold their shares respectively to Nicholas Wilkinson in 1570 and to Sir James FitzJames and William Cooke in 1571.

In 1564 Pistor disposed of his appointment as a gentleman pensioner to Richard Zouche of Somerset, brother-in-law of the 3rd Lord Monteagle, in return for an annuity of 40 marks. In 1571 the Privy Council began to press Monteagle to pay up, and perhaps Pistor’s return for Wareham to the Parliament of that year had something to do with this.

According to History of Parliament Online, the 'Richard Sowche gent.' who was returned for Hindon in 1584 was, in all probability, one of two cousins and namesakes. Either Richard Zouche,

yr. s. of Richard, 9th Lord Zouche of Harringworth, prob. by and w. Margaret, da. of John Cheney of West Woodhay, Berks. Gent. pens. 1564-73/7 Having inherited some of his father’s property at Wincanton, Somerset, Zouche ran through it within the next 12 years, and thenceforth depended upon the Crown. In November 1567, described as a gentleman pensioner, he received, ostensibly for services rendered, a licence to export 1,000 tons of double beer from London for three years. It was probably he who, three years later, acted as a bearer at the funeral of the 1st Earl of Pembroke, whose client he may thus have been. He is next heard of, in July 1578, being sent to Ireland, where he had evidently seen service already and where on this occasion he may have met Colonel John Zouche, of the Derbyshire house, and also perhaps, as we shall see, his namesake from Wiltshire. His spell of soldiering in Ireland lends colour to his identification with the man whose treacherous career was to sully the name of Zouche during the closing years of the reign. A kinsman of Edward, 11th Lord Zouche, who in 1603 denounced him to Robert Cecil, this Richard Zouche went to serve in the Netherlands with Leicester, only to join in Roland Yorke’s defection at Zutphen in 1586. After several years’ campaigning with the Spaniards, he returned to England in 1598, was imprisoned and then banished to the Netherlands, whence, after killing a man, he came back a year or two later to undergo further spells of imprisonment. His end has not been traced.

In the year 1540-1 the king's receiver accounted for only £38 1s. 7d., of which sum £30 was derived from the manor of Ansty. The remainder was produced by small parcels of land situated in 28 different places, almost all in Wiltshire. (fn. 13) In the same year the possessions of the preceptory were granted to John Zouche.

ZOUCHE, RICHARD (1590–1661), civilian, son of Francis Zouche, lord of the manor of Ansty, Wiltshire, and sometime M.P., who was son of Sir John Zouche, a younger son of John, eighth baron Zouche of Harringworth, was born at Ansty in 1590. His mother is said to have been Philippa, sixth daughter of George Ludlow of Hill Deverel, Wiltshire.

There was another Richard Zouche at large in this period, but Elizabeth Stanley's husband appears to have been the ne'er-do-well, because this one was married to a Bridget Drury.

History of Parliament Online's other suggestion for the 'Richard Sowche gent.' who was returned for Hindon in 1584 was Richard Zouche,

b. c.1555, s. of Edward Zouche of Piston, Wilts. by Christiana, da. of William Chudley of Ashton, Devon. m. aft. 1580, Bridget, da. of Robert Drury of Hawstead, Suff., 4s. 1da. suc. fa. 1 Dec. 1580.

By contrast, the life of this man was brief, respectable and dull. Inheriting a patrimony, the manor of Pitton, near Salisbury, which had been conveyed to his father and mother by Edward’s brother Sir John Zouche of Ansty, and which was hardly greater than that spendthrift had started with (it rated Edward Zouche at only £10 in the subsidy book of 1576), Richard Zouche was to leave it intact to his own heir. He did nothing, however, to augment it and he was to make no mark in local or national affairs; that was left to the Zouches of Ansty. His inconspicuousness makes it the more surprising that Richard Zouche should have allied himself in marriage, not with a minor local family, but with the house of Drury in Suffolk. This was not, to be sure, a lucrative match, for Bridget, one of the eight children of the Robert Drury who died prematurely in 1558, must have brought a slender dowry; but an alliance at once politically advantageous and geographically remote calls for explanation. With no evidence of a previous connexion between the families, a possible point of contact presents itself in Ireland. In the late 1570s the Drury family was active there: Sir William Drury, Bridget’s great-uncle, was president of Munster and afterwards chief justice at Dublin, and more than one of his relatives served there with him. If Richard Zouche of Pitton, then in his early twenties, had gone over at this time, as both his cousin and his kinsman John Zouche of Codnor did, it might well have been the prelude to his marriage, which took place soon after 1580 and was doubtless helped forward by his father’s death at the close of that year. From his marriage until his death, Richard and Bridget Zouche seem to have lived quietly at Pitton. Three sons and a daughter were born to them there, the eldest son on 7 Aug. 1583, but none of the boys can be traced at a university or an inn of court. All the children were under age when their father died on 22 Jan. 1600, ten days after making his will. He commended his soul to God and asked to be buried near his parents’ grave in the parish church, to which he bequeathed 5s. for repairs. His sons Walter, John and Robert were to receive £20 each on reaching the age of 24 and his daughter Frances £40 at the ‘full age’ of 20; the residue was to pass to his widow and his heir William, whom he appointed executors. His trusted friend Robert Bower, the Salisbury lawyer whose daughter Hester was contracted to William, was to oversee the performance of the will and to have the testator’s white nag. From the inquest, taken at Hindon on 29 Mar. 1600, we learn that William and Hester Zouche had already been enfeoffed with Pitton.

The matter of who was returned for Hindon in 1584 is complicated by uncertainty as to the patronage involved. Hindon belonged to the bishop of Winchester, who in 1584 was Thomas Cooper, his episcopate having begun that March. The man returned for the senior seat in 1584, Dr. Valentine Dale, was probably of his choosing, and if Cooper also nominated to the second seat, Richard Zouche of Pitton is much the more likely to have filled it; the protestantism of his uncle Sir John, still a power in the shire, would have commended itself to Cooper, while Sir William Drury, who was himself to sit for Suffolk, may have lent his brother-in-law support. But if, as is possible, the 2nd Earl of Pembroke was trying to get a foot in the door at Hindon, the choice is at least as likely to have fallen on Richard Zouche, courtier, pensioner, and perhaps ex-servant of Wilton, as on his younger and obscurer cousin. It is to be observed, however, that when Dale, having got in at Chichester, vacated the Hindon seat, he was replaced in it by young John Marvyn, who clearly owed that privilege to his uncle Sir James Marvyn; and it is this circumstance which, by seeming to imply that the bishop, with Zouche as his own nominee, was prepared to accept Marvyn for the contingent vacancy, perhaps tips the scale in favour of Richard Zouche of Pitton.

ZOUCHE, Sir John (d.1585), of Ansty, Wilts.

Son of John, 8th Lord Zouche of Harringworth, Northants. probably by 1st w. Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Capell of London. m. by c.1545, Catherine, daughter of Sir George St. Leger of Annery, Devon, widow of George Courtenay of Powderham, Devon, 3 or 4s. inc. Francis. Kntd. 10 Nov. 1549, KB Jan. 1559.

«He was personally involved in at least two Star Chamber cases, and in a third strongly supported his distant relative, Arthur, 14th Lord Grey of Wilton, in a dispute with John Fortescue I. A member of the west-country group of protestants, he was an overseer of the will of his stepson Sir William Courtenay»

Arthur [Grey], 14th Baron Grey of Wilton, KG born 1536 mar. (1) in or after 1553 Dorothy Zouche, illegit. dau. of Richard [la Zouche], 9th Baron Zouche of Haryngworth only child by his first wife 1. Hon Elizabeth Grey, mar. Sir Francis Goodwin, and had issue

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07.12 | 21:47

It looks like The Tau cross derives from the Egyptian Ankh and basically they are wearing it around their necks, life rebirth, salvation mirror. sun.Stonehenge looks like it is made up of Ts to form c

07.12 | 21:30

are wearing the symbol on effigies at Ingham church Norfolk and Henry StanleyD1528 at Hillingdon Middlesex.Countess Jacquline of Hainaut and husband Frank Borsele are also wearing the insignia others

07.12 | 21:23

These Queens could of been members of the order and i think the Tau cross is a symbol of the Holy Trinity also.These pendants could of been reliquaries.Lady margaret de Bois and Roger de bois

07.12 | 21:17

I think the Tau cross that they are wearing could be linked to the(knights) order of St Anthony, Mary 1st collar looks like it may represent the knotted girdle/waist cord of st Anthony .

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