♀Elizabeth de Averenges

Elizabeth de Averenges (born about 1254, died before 10 March 1315) was an English heiress, one of the three daughters who shared the lands of John de Averenges. She was three when her father died, and the king sold her wardship and the right to arrange her marriage to two of his yeomen. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Geoffrey Bessiles (1276–1339).

Early life and marriage

Elizabeth was the daughter of John de Averenges and his wife Amice. Her father died in early November 1257, and the inquest^W found that his daughters Joan, aged 9, Margaret, aged 6, and Elizabeth, aged 3, were his heirs. Because he 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 bargain brought them quarrels and lawsuits, and in 1259 the king let them keep it without payment.

Elizabeth married Matthias Bessiles, a king’s yeoman. The match most likely came about through that grant. Most of what Matthias held came through Elizabeth: the manor of Kings Brompton in Somerset, land at Buckland in Berkshire, and Radcot in Oxfordshire, where in 1272 he was granted a weekly market and a yearly fair. Their son Geoffrey was born about February 1276. In 1295 Matthias and Elizabeth had the king’s licence to grant Radcot to John Wogan for life, for a rent of £9 a year, with the manor to come back to them and Elizabeth’s heirs.

Widowhood

Matthias died before 30 December 1295. A jury at Oxford on 3 February 1296 found that Radcot was Elizabeth’s own inheritance and that she, “aged 40 and more”, was heir of the whole manor. The king took her homage^W and ordered that she have the lands they had held of him in right of her inheritance, and she held them as a widow for almost twenty years.

She died before 10 March 1315, the date of the writ that followed her death. The jury at Oxford on 20 March found that John Wogan still held Radcot for his life at £9 a year, with the manor to return to Elizabeth’s heirs, and named her son Geoffrey as her heir. Her other manor, Kings Brompton, took in Barlynch Priory^W, whose prioress owed suit at the manor court, and a fishery in a stream called Hadiho.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Geoffrey 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 Elizabeth.

Notes

Sources for her life

Her life comes from the inquests on her father (1257, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 1, no. 407), her husband (1295–96, vol. 3, no. 313) and herself (1315, vol. 5, no. 513), and from J. Renton Dunlop’s “The Besils Family of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Somerset” in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Notes 5, 16 and 17, which abstracts the same inquests and the Patent, Close and Charter Rolls. The surname is also written Averenches, Avereng’, Averinges and Everenges.

Her age

Her father’s inquest of 1257 gives her age as 3, which places her birth about 1254; her husband’s inquest of 1296 gives her as “aged 40 and more”, which agrees.

The marriage

No record gives the date of the marriage or says how it was made. Dunlop suggests that it was “probably owing to” the wardship grant of 1259, Emery Bezill sharing the Bessiles surname, and that Matthias was a younger son of Matthias Bessiles and his wife Beatrice, married to Elizabeth “by family arrangement”.

Geoffrey’s age

Her inquest of 1315 gives Geoffrey as “aged 24 and more”. His father’s inquest of 1296 had given him as 20, which would make him about 39 in 1315; ages in these inquests were often rough estimates.