♀Agnes Longland

Agnes Longland (about 1370 – before 21 September 1419) was a Somerset gentlewoman who married first John Farway of Penhallam, in Cornwall, and then Robert Coker of Lydeard St. Lawrence, in Somerset. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Margaret Farway (died before 1421).

Early life and first marriage

Agnes is said to have been the third daughter of John de Longland, of Grove in South Brent, Somerset, and his wife Isabel de Beaupre. She was born at Axbridge, in Somerset, about 1370; she was ten years old in 1380. Agnes Longland and John Farway married before 20 January 1385, when she was about fourteen. Her husband, whose name was also written Fareway, held land at Penhallam^W, in Jacobstow, Cornwall. They had one son, John, and two daughters, Margaret and Joan.

Widowhood and second marriage

John Farway died before 1415. In 1414 Agnes’s sister, Margaret Hakluyt, left her a silver cup with a cover in her will, and in the same year Agnes became one of the co-heirs of her cousin Alice Blount, the wife successively of Sir Richard Stafford and Sir Richard Stury. Before 1414–15 she married, as his second wife, Robert Coker of Lydeard St. Lawrence, who later served as Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset^W in 1422–23. They had no children.

In 1418 the bishop granted Robert and Agnes licenses for one year to have masses and other divine services celebrated in their presence. Agnes died shortly before 21 September 1419.

The family

Their son, John Farway, of Lydeard St. Lawrence in Somerset, was his father’s son and heir. He was living on 21 September 1419, the date of the inquisition post mortem^W held after his mother’s death, but he died before 1421, and his two sisters became his co-heirs. Joan, the younger daughter, married Walter Stawell, the son and heir apparent of Sir Thomas Stawell of Cothelstone, in Somerset; through her share she inherited the manor of Penhallam, and she was living in 1423.

Notes

Sources

Agnes’s parents, birth, marriages, legacy, inheritance, license and death are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, p. 174, a compiled genealogy. Richardson cites Furneaux family pedigrees printed in Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, vol. 1 (1834), pp. 243–248, and in Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, vol. 16 (1920), pp. 281–285; the Benolte visitation of Somerset (printed 1885), p. 108; F. W. Weaver, Somerset Medieval Wills, vol. 1 (1901), pp. 66–67; the List of Sheriffs for England and Wales (1898), p. 123; and the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 16 (1974), p. 71.

Dates

Richardson gives her birth as about 1370, from her age of ten in 1380, and her death as “shortly before 21 Sept. 1419.” Her second marriage is dated only as before a settlement of 1414–15.

Her name in the pedigrees

The Furneaux pedigrees call her Anne and Annes. The one dated 1421 says: “Et predicta Annes [Longland] tercia filia predicti Johannis [de Longland] et Isabelle marritata fuit Johanni Fareway et habuerunt exitum Margaretam et Johannam” (And the said Annes, third daughter of the said John de Longland and Isabel, was married to John Fareway, and they had issue Margaret and Joan). The Benolte visitation gives “Agnes [Longland], ux. John ffareway.”