Rice Mansel

Sir Rhys Mansel (c. 1487 – 1559), also Sir Rice Mansel, also Sir Rice Manxell, also Sir Rice Maunsell, Vice-Admiral, was High Sheriff of Glamorgan, a Commissioner of Peace and served as Chamberlain of Chester to King Henry VIII of England. He was High Sheriff of Glamorgan for 1542.

Sir Rice owned estates at Penrice and Oxwich, and at the Dissolution of the Monasteries he purchased Margam Abbey, which remained the property of his descendants until 1941.

He married three times, firstly Eleanor Basset, and secondly, Anne Bridges. Her son, Philip Mansel, married Mary Darrell.^[1]

Cecily Dabridgecourt, Lady Mansel[edit]

In 1527, he married his third wife, Cecily Dabridgecourt (died 1558), a daughter of William or John Dabridgecourt of Wolston and Solihull and Maria, a daughter of Richard Mynors of Treago,^[2] From 1525, she was a lady in waiting to Lady Mary, later Mary I of England, who gave her gifts of jewellery.^[3] Lady Mansel rode in Mary's coronation procession.^[4] The poet Richard Edwardes wrote of her "Mansell is a merry one".^[5]^[6] Anne Browne, Lady Petre, was chief mourner at her funeral at St Bartholomew-the-Great in September 1558.^[7] Rice Mansel's brother, Philip Mansel of Llandewy married Anne Dabridgecourt.^[8]

Rice Mansel's children with his third wife, Cecily Dabridgecourt, included:

Sir Edward Mansel (d. 1595), who married Jane Somerset, daughter of the Earl of Worcester, and was the father of Robert Mansell sailor and glass-making entrepreneur.^[9]
Anthony Mansel (MP), who married Elizabeth Basset,^[10] daughter of John Basset of Llantrithryd.^[11]
Mary Mansel, married Sir Thomas Southwell of Woodrising, Norfolk, and was the mother of Sir Robert Southwell.

^ Edward Phillipps Statham, History of the Family of Maunsell, Mansell, Mansel (1917), p. 247.
^ Edward Phillipps Statham, History of the Family of Maunsell, Mansell, Mansel (London, 1917), pp. 329–333, 248
^ Stanley Bindhoff, The House of Commons, 1509-1558, 2 (London, 1982), p. 565: Frederick Madden, Privy Purse Expenses of Princess Mary (London, 1831), p. 184
^ David Loades, Mary Tudor: A Life (Oxford, 1992), p. 355: John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 3:1 (Oxford, 1822), p. 55
^ Ros King, The Collected Works of Richard Edwards: Politics, Poetry and Performance in Sixteenth-Century England (Manchester, 2001), pp. 19, 188, 232.
^ Thomas Park, Nugae Antiquae, 2 (London, 1804), 394 citing BL Cotton Titus A. xxiv.
^ Edward Phillipps Statham, History of the Family of Maunsell, Mansell, Mansel (London, 1917), p. 334
^ Edward Phillipps Statham, History of the Family of Maunsell, Mansell, Mansel (1917), p. 247
^ William Llewelyn Davies. "Mansel family, of Oxwich, Penrice, and Margam Abbey, Glamorganshire". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 15 February 2020.
^ BASSETT, John II (by 1513-51), of Llantrithyd, The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
^ Stanley Bindhoff, The House of Commons, 1509-1558, 2 (London, 1982), p.565.

Maunsell, Charles Albert and Statham, Edward Phillips, History of the Family of Maunsell (Mansell, Mansel) , 2 vols. in 3, Anchor Press LTD, Tiptree Essex, 1917-20.