♀Beatrice de Say

Beatrice de Say (died before 19 April 1197) was an English heiress, the elder daughter and co-heiress of William de Say of Kimbolton and Saham, through whose right her husband, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, won the lands of the Mandeville earls of Essex. She was the twenty-third great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Maud de Mandeville (died 1236) and, probably, Maud’s descendant John Washburn (died 1547).

A ward of the king

Beatrice’s father, William de Say, held Kimbolton in Huntingdonshire and Saham in Norfolk, and died in 1177, shortly before 1 August, leaving two daughters as his heirs, Beatrice and Maud. The girls passed into the king’s wardship, and for more than seven years they and their father’s lands were kept by a royal custodian, Richard Ruffus. A royal survey of 1185 records that Geoffrey Fitz Peter^W had received Saham with William de Say’s daughter.

Geoffrey married Beatrice de Say before 25 January 1184/5, when the couple, with her younger sister Maud and Maud’s husband William de Boclande, divided their father’s inheritance by an agreement made in the king’s court at Melksham.

The Mandeville inheritance

Beatrice’s grandmother, also named Beatrice, was the only sister of the first Earl of Essex of the Mandeville family, and when his son William de Mandeville^W, Earl of Essex, died childless in November 1189, she was his heir. She was then of a great age, and her younger son, Geoffrey de Say, was allowed to take the inheritance in her place for a fine of 7,000 marks, which he never paid. In 1190 Geoffrey Fitz Peter paid a fine of 3,000 marks for all the lands of Earl William, on the ground that Beatrice was his rightful and nearest heir, and King Richard confirmed them to the couple by a charter dated at Messina on 23 January 1190/1.

Beatrice died in childbirth before 19 April 1197, before her grandmother, and was buried at Chicksand Priory^W; her body was later moved to Shouldham Priory^W in Norfolk, which Geoffrey founded before 15 June 1198. In his foundation charter Geoffrey gave the priory his manor of Shouldham for the soul of “Beatricis de Say uxoris mee cum corpore suo”, Beatrice de Say his wife, together with her body. Her children took the name Mandeville, and her son Geoffrey succeeded his father as Earl of Essex in 1213.

Notes

Sources

Beatrice’s parentage, her wardship, the division of 1184/5, the Mandeville inheritance, her death and burial and her children’s surname are from the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 5, 1926, pp. 120–126, under Essex), which cites the Rotuli de Dominabus of 1185, the pipe rolls, the chronicles of Walden Abbey and the charters themselves. Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 1), names Maud de Mandeville as the daughter of Geoffrey Fitz Peter “by his 1st wife, Beatrice, eldest daughter and co-heiress of William de Say”.

The 1185 survey

The survey says that the two daughters of William de Say were in the king’s custody with Saham, and then: “Postea recepit Galfridus filius Petri Suham cum filia Willelmi de Say”, afterwards Geoffrey Fitz Peter received Saham with the daughter of William de Say.

Her date of death

The chronicle of Walden Abbey says that Beatrice died before her grandmother, who died on 19 April in or before 1197, and that both died in the reign of Richard I. The first edition of the Complete Peerage (vol. 3, 1890, p. 281) had given her death in childbed as about 1200.

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.