♀Alice de Bohun

Alice de Bohun (living in 1255) was an English noblewoman, a daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, who was married by an agreement of 1239 to Roger de Tony, lord of Painscastle in Radnorshire and Baron of Flamstead in Hertfordshire. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Ralph de Tony (died 1295).

Marriage

Alice was a daughter of Humphrey de Bohun and of his first wife, Maud of Eu, who died in 1241. On 30 June 1239 an agreement was made for her marriage to Roger de Tony, the eldest surviving son and heir of Sir Ralph de Tony and of Parnel de Lacy. Roger is said to have been born about 29 September 1235, so that the bridegroom was not yet four years old when his marriage was settled. In great landed families a marriage was often arranged while the couple were still children, as a bond between two estates. Alice brought as her maritagium^W, the land a bride’s family gave with her, the manors of Newton Toney and East Coulston in Wiltshire.

Roger and Alice had a son, Ralph, and a daughter, Alice. Alice was living in 1255, and she was buried in the chapter house of Llanthony Abbey, near Gloucester, where her mother had been buried in 1241. When Roger died, shortly before 12 May 1264, the marriage of their son, Ralph, then about nine, was granted to the boy’s grandfather, Alice’s father, Humphrey de Bohun.

The family

Their daughter, Alice, married Walter de Beauchamp of Alcester in Warwickshire, later steward of the household of King Edward I, by a settlement made in or about 1269, and her maritagium included East Coulston, the Wiltshire manor that had come to the Tonys with her mother. In 1289 Alice and Walter received a dispensation^W to remain married, because they were related in the fourth degree of kindred, and in 1293 they exchanged their land at East Coulston with her brother Ralph for the manor of Cressingham in Norfolk. They had at least five sons and four daughters.

Lines of descent

Her line to Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) runs through her son Ralph de Tony and then through Ralph’s daughter Alice de Tony (died 1325). From Alice de Tony the line passes to her daughter Joyce la Zouche and several generations more, and, probably, reaches Nancy through John Washburn (died 1547), whom the pedigrees make a son of Joan Mitton.

Notes

Sources

Alice’s parentage, her marriage agreement of 30 June 1239, her maritagium, her two children, the last mention of her in 1255 and Roger’s second marriage are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 824 (Tony 3); her place among the Earl’s children, her mother’s death on 14 August 1241 and her mother’s burial at Llanthony are from pp. 99–100 (Bohun 2). The grant of her son’s marriage is from p. 825 (Tony 4), and her daughter’s marriage and its settlement, the dispensation and the exchange of 1293 from p. 674 (Powick 4).

Roger’s age at the marriage

Richardson gives Roger’s birth as about 29 September 1235, and his age follows from that date and the date of the agreement.

Her burial

Richardson cites a Bohun pedigree among the records of Llanthony Abbey, printed in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (vol. 6, part 1, 1830, pp. 134–136): “Alia, vocata Alicia, nupta fuit domino de Thonye, et que Alicia jacet in capitulo predicto”, another daughter, called Alice, was married to the lord of Tony, and that Alice lies in the aforesaid chapter house.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton 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.