Dionisia Brockett

Thomas Brocket who born about 1363, builder of the original Brocket Hall in Yorkshire and married to Dionice Sampson.

There is a document known as Harley manuscript 807, a 120-page manuscript by Robert Glover Esq., Somerset Herald. It was fashionable in the reign of Elizabeth I to have family trees drawn and displayed as works of art. Harley 807 is not a family tree in our sense today—a comprehensive chart of the individual members of this Broket clan. Only those who had a right to the estate were followed up on the pedigree. Instead it is a gilded piece of art intended to show the prestigious roots of a family, illustrated with arms (both true and created) so that even the illiterate might know that they were dealing with people of stature.

On pages 44 and 45 Glover sketched a Broket pedigree spanning 12 generations. In this manuscript, Dionice is described as one of the daughters and heiress to Lord Fauconbrege. While Dionice did not descend from that Lord Fauconberg, she did indeed descend from a younger Fauconberg line whose heiress had married a Sampson, 4 generations before Dionice.

Thomas (or his descendants) appears to have assumed arms himself by modifying his wife's. Harley 807, while removing such an obvious source, perhaps retains an echo in the arms of Maude Gouer, the first heiress to marry a Broket. The Sampson name was too recent to be removed entirely and was relegated to a brother 3 generations earlier—although anonymously and without arms—'John maried one of the d of Samson'.

Both Sampsons and Fauconbergs had died out in the male line, so Glover could be a creative genealogist.

• The Sampsons had been county and city gentry, the Fauconbergs nobility.
• To gild the lily, Dionice was not just given the arms of 1 noble family—Fauconberg—but also of Neville, who were moreover related to royalty.

Children of Sir Thomas Brocket and wife Dionece Sampson:

• Thomas Brocket, elder son ,was born about 1405 and become a Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire in 1435. He became the heir of Brocket Hall and married married Elizabeth Ashe of Hertfordshire He died in 1477 and she died, childless, in 1482. Dame Elizabeth, as she was known, wife of Thomas, was heir to the manor of Symonds Hide at Bishops Hatfield which became the Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire. They had no children. The rights to the manor passed to his brother Edward
• Edward Brocket married Elizabeth Thwaytes. They had several children. He inherited the family's estates when his brother died childless and the manor remained in the family through his descendants until it came to Sir John Brocket who married Helen, daughter of Sir Robert Lytton of Knebworth Place.

Links to additional material:

• http://www.wheathampstead.net/brockett/index.htm
• http://www.brockett.info/Hertfordshire/Glover.htm +http://knight-france.com/geneal/names/3773.htm, which states that Dionice was not the daughter of a Neville or a Fauconberg, but the daughter of Sir William Sampson of Appleton, Yorkshire.