♂Henry de Bohun

Henry de Bohun^W (1176 – 1 June 1220) was an English nobleman, Earl of Hereford and hereditary Constable of England, who joined the barons against King John in 1215 and died on crusade five years later. He was the twenty-second great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Humphrey de Bohun.

Early life and the earldom

Henry was the son and heir of Humphrey de Bohun of Trowbridge in Wiltshire, hereditary Constable of England^W, and of Margaret of Scotland, a daughter of Henry of Scotland, Earl of Northumberland. He is said to have been born in 1176. Through his mother he was a nephew of William the Lion^W, King of Scots. Sometime between 1187 and 1193 he witnessed a charter his mother made to Bradenstoke Priory.

King John created him Earl of Hereford on 28 April 1200, granting him twenty pounds a year from the third penny of the county, the share of its revenues that went to an earl. Later that year Henry was among the nobles sent to summon his uncle William to do homage to King John at Lincoln.

Marriage

Henry married Maud de Mandeville, a daughter of Geoffrey Fitz Peter^W, Earl of Essex, and of his first wife, Beatrice de Say. Her maritagium^W, the land her family gave with her, included the manor of Wheatenhurst in Gloucestershire. They had three sons, Humphrey, William and Henry, and a daughter, Grace, who married Robert de Dunstanville.

Magna Carta and the civil war

In 1215 Henry joined the confederacy of barons against the king, and he was one of the twenty-five barons elected to guarantee the observance of Magna Carta, which King John granted on 15 June 1215. The twenty-five were charged with holding the king to his promises, by force if he broke them. When the agreement collapsed into the First Barons’ War^W, Henry was among the barons excommunicated by Pope Innocent III on 16 December 1215, and his lands were seized by the Crown. After King John’s death he held to the party of Louis of France^W, the French prince the rebels had invited to take the English throne, and he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Lincoln^W on 20 May 1217.

Crusade and death

In 1219 Henry went on crusade to the Holy Land, in the Fifth Crusade^W, and he died there on 1 June 1220. He was buried, with his son Henry, in the chapter house of Llanthony Priory^W outside Gloucester. His widow was given her dower in the manor of Oaksey in Wiltshire until their son Humphrey should assign it, and in 1227 she inherited the earldom of Essex from her brother.

The line of descent

Henry’s line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through his son Humphrey and, probably, Humphrey’s descendant John Washburn (died 1547). The Notes explain why that link is given as probable.

Notes

Sources

Henry’s parentage, birth year, marriage, children, career and death, and Maud’s parentage and maritagium, are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 1), which cites, among others, the Complete Peerage, the Dictionary of National Biography and James M. Powell’s Anatomy of a Crusade, 1213–1221 (1986). The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, 1926, pp. 457–459, under Hereford) gives the same death date and burial and the dower in Oaksey; vol. 5 (1926), p. 134, note, gives the king’s charter of 28 April 1200 granting him twenty pounds a year “de tercio denario comitatus Hereford”, from the third penny of the county of Hereford.

His numbering as earl

Richardson numbers him the fifth Earl of Hereford, counting the earlier holders of the title. Works that count only the Bohun earls call him the first Earl of Hereford.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.