Comments on Joan (Saunders) Lee

Question

On 12 Jan 2021 Anonymous Baker wrote on Saunders-9725:

When William Saunders made his Will on 17 October 1492 (transcript available here -http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-10-83.pdf - he named his daughters – Anne (the eldest), Isabel, Joyce and Alice; in a memorandum dated 22 November 1493 he includes the unborn child his wife is carrying. This unborn child has the potential to be a daughter Joan BUT she cannot be the Jane Clarke who died 19 October 1516 having married two husbands and produced four children (who all have yob before 1492). Jane/Joan (Spencer) Saunders Cope made her Will 20 January 1526 (transcript available here http://www.oxford-shakespeare.com/Probate/PROB_11-22-125.pdf) and there is no mention of a ‘deceased’ daughter Jane/Joan Lee or Clarke nor of any Lee or Clarke grandchildren. Given the lack of a daughter Jane/Joan Saunders in William’s Will of 17 October 1492 and the impossible timeframe for the unborn child of 22 November 1493 to be married twice and produce four children by 1516, I would suggest that Joan (Saunders) Lee is not a daughter of William Saunders and Joan/Jane Spencer and should be disconnected.

Answer 1

I think the explanation must be that there are two Saunders families that have been combined. There was the merchant family in Banbury, Oxon, and the gentry family in Charlwood, Surrey. The earlier William Saunders were both recorded at about the same time in the early 1450s, one in Banbury and the other in Charlwood. The error seems to go back to the Visitation of Essex, which calls William Saunders "of Surrey" in one line and then "of Banbury" in the next line. I'm not sure how to sort them all out yet, but it seems to me the first step is two separate them into two groups.