♂Adam de Peshale

Adam de Peshale (died by 1347) was a landholder of Horsley, near Eccleshall in Staffordshire, who served as sheriff of Staffordshire and Shropshire in 1341. By his second wife, Joan de Eyton, he was the father of Sir Adam Peshale, who later sat in Parliament for both counties. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Adam Peshale (died 1419).

Horsley and Bishop’s Offley

Horsley belonged to the prebend of Peshall in Lichfield Cathedral, and Adam held it of the prebend in the reign of Edward III. He married Joan, the widow of Sir Henry de Cresswell and the daughter and heiress of John de Eyton. Joan’s father allowed Adam to hold the manor of Bishop’s Offley for the support of Joan and her two daughters by Sir Henry, Joan and Elizabeth.

Outlawry and death

Adam’s career ended violently. He is said to have been a turbulent man, and he was outlawed^W, so that his lands, the Cresswell manor among them, passed into the king’s hands. A history of the county records that he was seized and beheaded at Kaynton in Shropshire. Because he had never actually been convicted of felony, his own lands were restored to his son and heir, Richard de Peshale. After his death the rights of the Cresswell heirs were looked into, as the Patent Rolls^W for 1346–47 show, and Joan was living as his widow in 1360–61.

Lines of descent

The line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through his son Adam Peshale (died 1419), whose daughter Margaret Peshale was the mother of William Mitton. William’s daughter Joan Mitton was the mother of John Washburn (died 1547), and the line runs on, probably, through him. The identification of that John is explained in Notes.

Notes

Sources

Adam’s second marriage to Joan, the daughter and heiress of John de Eyton, and his son Sir Adam are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 116, and Plantagenet Ancestry (2011), p. 348, both of which call Sir Adam “younger and only surviving son of Adam de Peshale, of Horsley, Staffordshire, by his 2nd wife, Joan, daughter and heiress of John de Eyton”. Horsley, Bishop’s Offley, the outlawry, the beheading at Kaynton and the restoration of his lands to Richard are from the annotated edition of Walter Chetwynd’s history of Pirehill Hundred in Collections for a History of Staffordshire (1914), which cites Canon Bridgeman’s history of Weston-under-Lizard and the Patent Rolls. His sheriffship of 1341 is from volume 4 of the same Collections, which names his son Sir Richard de Peshale, sheriff of Shropshire from 1374 to 1376, as “the son of Adam de Peshale, Sheriff of Staffordshire and Shropshire in 1341”.

His death

The beheading carries no date in the history. The inquiry into the Cresswell heirs’ rights “after Adam’s death” is dated 20 Edward III (25 January 1346 to 24 January 1347), and a lawsuit of 34 Edward III (1360–61) calls Joan “Adam de Peshall’s widow”, so he was dead by early 1347.

His children

Richardson calls Joan Adam’s second wife but does not name the first. The county history calls Richard de Peshale Adam’s son and heir without naming Richard’s mother. Volume 4 of the Collections also gives a daughter Isabel as “the daughter of Adam (?) de Peshale, and sister of Sir Adam de Peshale”; the question mark is the editor’s.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joan Mitton, Adam’s great-great-granddaughter, was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.