The New Murrey and Blue blog

East Shefford is a tiny place in Berkshire, just down the road from Great Shefford. It’s not an actual village and never has been, it would seem…but it does have a very interesting church, spireless, small, untouched, looking to the visitor as if it is on private land beside a manor house. However, there is a public right of way leading to it and a key in a box.

Entering the church, it smells damp, ancient. Wall paintings, faded but in reasonable condition, appear before the visitor’s gaze…but the most stunning feature is the high status 15th c alabaster tomb of Thomas Fettiplace and his wife Beatrice. Now it is often claimed that Beatrice was a daughter of King Afonso of Portugal. However, no 14th c king of Portugal by that name had a daughter called Beatrice. Some sources make her the illegitimate child of John I of Portugal by his mistress, Ines Piris. He also had a son called…Afonso. If Afonso was her brother, not her father, that would make her half-sister to King Edward (Duarte) of Portugal, the son of Philippa of Lancaster, as well as many other legitimate princes and princesses.

However, this is almost certainly NOT ‘our’ Berkshire Beatrice. King John I’s daughter married Thomas FitzAlan, 12th Earl of Arundel. She then married John Holland, 2nd Earl of Huntingdon. She did not appear to have had children with either and is buried in the FitzAlan chapel in Sussex.

The Berkshire Beatrice may have been from a noble Portuguese family called ‘Pinto’ or ‘Sousa’…but FOUR visitations do call her ‘the daughter of the King of Portugal.’ She WAS definitely married to Sir Gilbert Talbot, however, so must have been of fair social standing, especially as his first wife was Joan of Woodstock, daughter of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester . That Beatrice was definitely Portuguese is evidenced from a mention in the Calendar of Close Rolls, 1419-22, , which reads: “Beatrice, who was born in Portugal, while she was an alien, …”

Now if she was from the Pinto or Sousa family, she would be a descendant of a King Afonso III, who lived in the 13thc, but through an illegitimate line. Some have suggested that she may have come to England with the other royal Beatrice, hence the confusion of the two. Berkshire Beatrice’s arms did contain the royal arms of Portugal quartered with five crescents in saltire, which is similar to the arms of the Sousa family. 

In any case, Sir Gilbert Talbot, who was the brother of John Talbot, later Earl of Shrewsbury and father of Eleanor Talbot, died at the Siege of Rouen in 1418. His widow Beatrice then married Thomas Fettiplace, who was the steward of Sir Gilbert. It appears that they had several children, and the Fettiplaces, although not lords, certainly were pretty wealthy and had some large parcels of lands in Berkshire and Oxfordshire and built themselves some very grand tombs….