♀Hawise (surname unknown)

Hawise (living in 1339) married John de Legh, lord of the manor of Kingston in Warwickshire and of Leigh in Berkshire, and was the mother of the heiress Katherine de Legh. She was the eighteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her daughter Katherine de Legh (died 1406).

Her surname and family are not known. John and Hawise were married by 1339, the year in which, by the Warwickshire county history, John settled the manor of Kingston on himself, his wife Hawise and his own heirs. They had two sons, William and Roger, who were living in 1348 but died without children, and a daughter, Katherine, who became her father’s heir and married the knight Thomas Bessiles. When and where Hawise died is not known.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her daughter Katherine, Katherine’s son Peter Bessiles (1363–1425), Peter’s son Thomas Bessiles, Thomas’s son William Bessiles (1444–1515), William’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, her daughter Anne Fettiplace, 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

Hawise is named in the 1339 settlement of Kingston, which the Victoria County History of Warwickshire, vol. 5 (1949), pp. 42–46, under Chesterton, takes from the feet of fines^W. J. Renton Dunlop’s account of the Besils family in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Note 21, also calls Katherine the daughter “of John de Legh and his wife Hawise of Kingston alias Chesterton”. Her sons and their being alive in 1348 come from the same Warwickshire history, citing the plea roll of Michaelmas term, 22 Edward III.