♀Agnes (surname unknown)

Agnes (died 16 July 1349) was an Englishwoman who held a share of the manor of Kings Brompton in Somerset for life, under a grant to her and her husband Geoffrey Bessiles, a tenant of the king in chief. Widowed in 1339, she had the king’s licence in 1343 to marry whomsoever she would of the king’s allegiance. She was the eighteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Thomas Bessiles (1309–1378).

Marriage

Her family is not known. In 1318 Geoffrey had the king’s licence to pass Kings Brompton to Robert de Walle, who was to grant it back to Geoffrey and Agnes and the heirs of their bodies. The licence noted the cost to the Crown: if Geoffrey died leaving Agnes alive and his heir under age, the king would lose the custody of the manor. Their son Thomas was born before 1309, and he was heir to them both.

Widowhood

Geoffrey died before 13 March 1339. As the widow of a tenant-in-chief^W, Agnes could not marry again without the king’s leave, and in 1343 she had his licence to marry whomsoever she would of the king’s allegiance. She married Adam de Dene, and outlived him too: the inquest^W taken after her death calls her “late the wife of Adam de Dene”.

Agnes died on 16 July 1349. The writ for her inquest went out on 24 July, and the jury at Kings Brompton found that she had held a fourth part of the manor for life under the grant to her and Geoffrey, and that her son Thomas, “aged 40 and more”, was her heir.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Thomas and Thomas’s son Peter Bessiles (1363–1425) down to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They part among the Dudleys and meet again in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both descend from Agnes.

Notes

Sources for her life

Everything here comes from J. Renton Dunlop’s “The Besils Family of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Somerset” in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Notes 18–19: the licence of 1318 (Patent Rolls, 12 Edward II), the licence to remarry of 1343 (Patent Rolls, 17 Edward III) and her inquisition post mortem of 1349 (Edward III, file 94/36), which is also in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, volume 9.

Her name

Her maiden name is not known. The index to the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem prints her as “Agnes (de Dene)”, but de Dene was the name of her second husband: the entry itself is headed “Agnes, late the wife of Adam de Dene”. Dunlop’s abstract of the 1318 licence gives her name as “Agnes (? Beatrice)”; Beatrice, daughter of Percival Simeon, was the partner of her son Thomas in the settlement of 1323, and the 1349 inquest calls Thomas “son of the said Geoffrey and Agnes”.