♂Geoffroy de Rancon

Geoffroy de Rancon was a nobleman of western France. He was the twenty-fourth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Bourgogne de Rancon.

He is said to have been Seigneur de Taillebourg. His daughter Bourgogne, Dame de Fontenay, married Hugue VIII, Sire de Lusignan, a lord of the house of Lusignan^W, and their younger son Raoul d’Exoudun became Count of Eu in Normandy by his marriage to Alice of Eu in or before 1191.

Notes

Sources

Geoffroy’s title and his fatherhood of Bourgogne rest on the Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, 1926, under Eu, pp. 159–160), which calls Raoul d’Exoudun “a yr. s. of Hugue VIII, Sire de Lusignan, by Bourgogne, Dame de Fontenay, da. of Geoffroy de Rancon, Seigneur de Taillebourg”. That clause is all the Complete Peerage gives of him: no wife, no other children and no dates.

The descent through John Washburn

The line from Geoffroy 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.