♀Amice (surname unknown)

Amice (living in 1257) was an Englishwoman who married John de Averenges, a landholder who held the manors of Kings Brompton in Somerset and Radcot in Oxfordshire of the king in chief. She was widowed in 1257 with three daughters under ten, the heirs to his lands. She was the twentieth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Elizabeth de Averenges (1254–1315).

Marriage and widowhood

Amice’s own family is not known. She married John de Averenges. Their daughters Joan, Margaret and Elizabeth were born about 1248, 1251 and 1254.

John died on Thursday, 8 November 1257, before he was thirty. The inquest^W on his lands found that “his daughters, Joan aged 9, Margaret aged 6, and Elizabeth aged 3, are his heirs”. It dealt too with Amice’s quarantine at Radcot, the forty days a widow was allowed to stay on in her husband’s chief house after his death. Because John had held land of the king in chief^W, the Crown took charge of his lands and of his daughters’ marriages, and the king sold that wardship to two of his yeomen, William de Renham and Emery Bezill. The youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married Matthias Bessiles, a king’s yeoman. Amice is said to have been still living on 4 February 1260/1.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s son Geoffrey Bessiles 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 Amice.

Notes

Sources for her life

She is named as John’s widow in the inquest on his lands (writ of 13 November 1257, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 1, no. 407). The Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, the family chart in the article on the earldom of Essex) gives her as the wife of “John d’Averenches, of Radcot” and as living on 4 February 1260/1, without naming the record behind that date. Her surname and parents are not recorded.