♀Elizabeth Bessiles

Elizabeth Bessiles (about 1475 – before 9 October 1520) was an English gentlewoman of Berkshire. The daughter of William Bessiles of Bessels Leigh, she married Richard Fettiplace of East Shefford, and when he made his will on 11 August 1510 he named her as his executrix, and she was then expecting a child. She was the thirteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Anne Fettiplace.

Early life

Elizabeth was the daughter of William Bessiles and his wife Alice Harcourt, a daughter of Sir Richard Harcourt of Witham. She is said to have been their only child. She was given as forty years old in 1515, so she was born about 1475.

Marriage and family

Elizabeth married Richard Fettiplace, the son and heir of John Fettiplace of East Shefford and his wife Joan Fabian. They are said to have had five sons and seven daughters: John, Edward, Anthony, a second John and Thomas, and Susan, Jane, Anne, Dorothy, Mary, Eleanor and Elizabeth. Three of the daughters are said to have become nuns, Dorothy and Eleanor at Syon Abbey^W and Elizabeth at Amesbury Priory^W, and Susan later took a widow’s vow of chastity at Syon. The Anne who married Edward Purefoy, a gentleman of Shalston in Buckinghamshire, was probably their daughter.

Widowhood and second marriage

Richard asked in his will to be buried in the chancel of Poughley Priory^W in the parish of Chaddleworth. He left the estate in Elizabeth’s hands as executrix and chose as supervisors “my wifes fader William Besils and my brother William ffetiplace”. The will remembered “my wif now beyng with childe”, and it was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 15 May 1511.

Before 1515 Elizabeth is said to have married Sir Richard Eliot^W of Salisbury, a King’s serjeant-at-law^W and justice of the Court of Common Pleas^W, as his second wife. Her father died on 5 May 1515, and the inquisitions held after his death found her his heir, aged forty and more. He had already settled much of his land: Bessels Leigh, Radcot and Grafton were to come to her only after her mother’s lifetime, and Carswell had gone to her son John Fettiplace and his wife Dorothy, with the remainder to her. In 1518 she and her husband joined her widowed daughter Dorothy Codrynton in a suit in Chancery^W against Christopher Codrynton, who had refused to settle on Dorothy the lands promised at her marriage to his son John. Elizabeth died before 9 October 1520, the day Sir Richard made his will asking to be buried in Salisbury Cathedral in the place he had prepared there for himself and his wife.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Anne, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for her life

Richard Fettiplace’s will (Prerogative Court of Canterbury, PROB 11/17, dated 11 August 1510, proved 15 May 1511) names her as his wife and executrix and calls William Besils his wife’s father. Everything else here comes from Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., pp. 263-264): her parents, her birth about 1475 (“aged 40 in 1515”), the children, the second marriage “before 1515 (as his 2nd wife)”, the 1518 Chancery suit, and her death before 9 October 1520, the date of Sir Richard Eliot’s will (proved 26 May 1522). Her father’s death and the settlement of his lands come from J. Renton Dunlop’s abstracts of the 1515 inquisitions (Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5, 1923–25), which call her “his daughter and heir” and “aged 40 and more”. The name is written Bessiles, Bessels, Besils and Bessilles in the sources. The Berkshire visitation pedigree (The Four Visitations of Berkshire, Harleian Society vol. 56, p. 28) calls her “the Daughter and heire of William Bessilles of Besilles Lye”.

Her father’s lands

Richardson says that in 1515 she inherited the manors of Bessels Leigh, West Hall, Carswell and Longworth. The inquisitions set out a narrower inheritance: Carswell had been settled in 1509 on John Fettiplace and Dorothy his wife in tail male, with remainder to Elizabeth; Bessels Leigh in 1511 on her mother Alice for life, then on Elizabeth for her life; Radcot and Grafton in Oxfordshire on Alice for life with remainder to Elizabeth; and lands at Longworth on trustees to keep a priest of the Friars Preachers at Oxford for eighty years, with remainder to William’s heirs. Lands in Langford were settled on Elizabeth for her life, and William died holding in his own right the manor of Tynteyns in Appleton.

The children

The Berkshire visitation pedigree names the children as John, Edward, Anthony, a second John, Thomas, Susan, Jane, Anne (Purefoy of Shalston), Dorothy, Eleanor (a nun of Syon) and Elizabeth (a nun of Amesbury). Richardson agrees and adds Mary, wife of James Yate. Richard’s will remembers “my two doughters Dorothe and Elinor”.

Anne

The 1619 Leicestershire visitation pedigree of the Purefoy family calls Edward Purefoy’s wife “Anne Da. of Tho. Phetiplace”, naming a Thomas rather than Richard as her father; the Berkshire visitation and Richardson both place her in this family.