♀Bourgogne de Rancon

Bourgogne de Rancon was a noblewoman of Poitou, in western France, and the wife of Hugue de Lusignan. She was the twenty-third great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Raoul d’Exoudun.

She is said to have been Dame de Fontenay and the daughter of Geoffroy de Rancon, Seigneur de Taillebourg, and her husband was Hugue VIII, Sire de Lusignan, a lord of the house of Lusignan^W. Hugue and Bourgogne were the parents of Raoul d’Exoudun, a younger son who took his name from Exoudun near Melle and became Count of Eu^W in Normandy by his marriage to Alice of Eu in or before 1191.

Notes

Sources

Bourgogne’s title, her father, her marriage to Hugue de Lusignan and her motherhood of Raoul rest on the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, 1926, under Eu, pp. 159–160), which calls Raoul “a yr. s. of Hugue VIII, Sire de Lusignan, by Bourgogne, Dame de Fontenay, da. of Geoffroy de Rancon, Seigneur de Taillebourg”. No dates of birth, marriage or death for Bourgogne are given there.

The descent through John Washburn

The line from Bourgogne to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547. That he was the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joan Mitton is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, so the descent through him is probable rather than proved.