♂Henry Ligon

Henry Ligon (died 31 July 1577) was a younger son of the Lygons of Madresfield, in Worcestershire, England, who made his home at Upton St Leonards, in Gloucestershire, and served Henry, Lord Berkeley^W. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Isabel Lygon (1555–1615).

Family

Henry was the fourth son of Sir Richard Lygon of Madresfield, in Worcestershire, and Kemerton, in Gloucestershire, and his wife, Margery Greville, a daughter of Sir William Greville of Cheltenham, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas^W. The family’s lands went to his older brother, William Ligon, the son and heir, and in 1554 Henry held a lease of a wood at Cromhall from him.

Henry married Elizabeth Berkeley, a daughter of Sir John Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, in Gloucestershire, and his wife, Isabel Dennis. The couple had two sons, Sir Arnold and Henry, and two daughters, Mary, who married Samuel Clinton, and Isabel. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry, a study of colonial families descended from the medieval kings of England, traces the ancestry of both Henry and Elizabeth back to King Edward I.

Service and death

In 1560, and again in 1568, Henry was in the service of Henry, Lord Berkeley. He made his will on 30 July 1577, the day before he died, and his daughter Isabel was among those he remembered in it. The will was proved on 15 August 1577.

Notes

Sources

Henry’s parents, his brother’s lease, his service with Lord Berkeley, his marriage, his children and his will are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, p. 634, and from the same author’s Magna Carta Ancestry, pp. 264 and 510. Richardson cites John Smyth’s Berkeley manuscripts, the heralds’ visitations^W of Gloucestershire (1623, 1569 and 1582–83, printed together in 1885) and of Worcestershire (1569), the Madresfield muniments of the Lygon family, and an article in The American Genealogist, vol. 9 (1932–1933).

Dates

Plantagenet Ancestry gives no birth date for Henry. Magna Carta Ancestry puts his birth at “say 1525”, an estimate rather than a record. No date or place is given for his marriage.

The name

Richardson writes the name Ligon (or Lygon). The 1569 Visitation of Worcestershire calls him “Henry [Lygon]”, who “m. Eliz. da. to S’ John Berckly K.” The Berkeley pedigree in the Gloucestershire visitations writes him “Hen. Lison [sic] of Upton St. Leonards”, the error marked by Richardson.