♂Humphrey de Bohun

Humphrey de Bohun^W (living in 1176) was an English nobleman of Trowbridge in Wiltshire and hereditary Constable of England^W, who married a Scottish princess, the widowed Duchess of Brittany. He was the twenty-third great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Henry de Bohun (1176–1220) and, probably, Henry’s descendant John Washburn (died 1547).

The constable

Humphrey was the son of another Humphrey de Bohun, steward to King Henry I, and of Margaret of Gloucester, the eldest daughter of Miles of Gloucester^W, Earl of Hereford and Constable of England. Miles’s sons all died without children, and their inheritance was divided among his three daughters. Humphrey witnessed a charter of his uncle Mahel of Hereford confirming the gifts of Miles and of Mahel’s brothers.

Humphrey never held the title of Earl of Hereford, but he was recognized as constable. As “constable of the King of the English” he made a charter to the priory of Bohon in Normandy, the place the family took its name from. The Bohun inheritance lay in Wiltshire, and in 1175/6 he accounted at the Exchequer for a relief of 300 marks on his land there, the payment an heir made to take up his inheritance.

Marriage

After the death of her first husband, Conan, Duke of Brittany and Earl of Richmond, Margaret of Scotland married Humphrey de Bohun. She was a daughter of Henry of Scotland^W, Earl of Huntingdon, so that Humphrey’s wife was the widowed Duchess of Brittany and a sister of two Kings of Scots, Malcolm IV^W and William the Lion^W. Between 1172 and 1181 Humphrey made his charter to Bohon for the health of his wife, the Countess Margaret, and in 1175/6 the sheriff paid him more than £28 from her dower lands in Earl Conan’s honor. Their son, Henry de Bohun (1176–1220), was created Earl of Hereford in 1200 and was one of the twenty-five barons chosen to guarantee Magna Carta.

Humphrey died not many years after 1176. Margaret outlived him and died in 1201.

Notes

Sources

Humphrey’s parentage, his standing as constable, the charter to Bohon, the Exchequer entries of 1175/6, his marriage, his son and Margaret’s death in 1201 are given in the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 6, 1926, pp. 457–458 and notes, under Hereford), citing Round’s Calendar of Documents Preserved in France, the Pipe Roll of 22 Henry II and the chronicler Roger of Hoveden. The division of Miles of Gloucester’s inheritance and Mahel’s charter are in the notes to pp. 456–457. Margaret’s brothers are from the same volume, p. 642, note (under Huntingdon). Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 99 (Bohun 1), gives Henry de Bohun as the son and heir of “Humphrey de Bohun, of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, hereditary Constable of England, by Margaret (or Margery), daughter of Henry of Scotland, Earl of Northumberland”.

Earl or constable

According to the chronicle of Llanthony, Humphrey’s mother “had with her the county of Hereford and the constableship of England” as her share of her father’s inheritance. The Complete Peerage remarks that this “appears to be anticipating events, so far as concerns a titular earldom”: the earldom came to the family only with Humphrey’s son Henry in 1200.

His death

No date is known for his death. The Complete Peerage, after the Exchequer entries of 1175/6, says only that “He d. not many years after.”

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.