♀Isabella (surname unknown)

Isabella was a Worcestershire landholder and church patron of the early fourteenth century, at Stanford and Clevelode, both as the wife and as the widow of Sir John Washbourne, a Worcestershire knight. She was the nineteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Roger Washbourne.

Marriage

Isabella’s own family is not known. She married John Washbourne, son and heir of Sir Roger Washbourne, who sat in Parliament as a knight of the shire in 1312. In 1310 Robert Lestourmy sued John and Isabella, as tenants, for a house, meadow, woodland, rents and two virgates of land at Overton, near Stanford; on 29 April the king ordered the justices of the Bench not to put John in default for failing to appear, because he had been away in the king’s service.

In August 1316 it was Isabella, not her husband, who presented Peter de Wassebourn to the living of Stanford. A married woman’s lands and rights were normally exercised by her husband, so she may have held the right of presentation, the advowson^W, in her own name, unless John had just died.

Widowhood

John was dead before Michaelmas 1319. That year John Cassy, a minor suing through his guardians, was at law with Roger, son of Sir John, over premises at Droitwich that Isabella, “the late wife of Sir John”, claimed as her dower^W. Their known son and heir was Roger Washbourne, who had married Margaret by 1316. He was probably her son as well, a link that rests on a compiled genealogy and on the subsidy rolls.

In 1322 Isabella presented to the living of Clevelode (Clyvelode), and the record names her “Isabella de Wassebourn domina ejusdem villae”, lady of the same township. She was assessed with Roger under Washbourne and Stanford in the subsidy roll^W of 1327, and in the roll of 1332–33 she appears under Stanford as “Isabella de Stanforde”, again with Roger. When she died is not known.

Notes

Sources

Isabella is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), pp. 5–6, in his account of her husband, Sir John (2). The 1310 suit is from the Calendar of Close Rolls (3 Edward II, 1310); the Droitwich case from a De Banco roll of 13 Edward II (1319), m. 18; the presentations to Stanford (“9 Kal. September, 1316”) and Clevelode (1322) from Nash’s history of Worcestershire. Davenport writes “dowry” for her claim at Droitwich.

Her presentation of 1316

That Isabella acted “in the exercise of her own right” is Davenport’s reading of the presentation, and he allows that “of course it is possible that her husband had recently died”. Clevelode was later attached to Madresfield.

Her family

Davenport suggested, from the dower claim at Droitwich and from the Karsy family’s holding at Orleton, next to Stanford, under the Washbournes, that “possibly Isabella, the wife of Sir John, was a member of the Cassy family”. He gives no record of her parentage, and none is given here.

Her son Roger

That Roger was Isabella’s son, and not only her husband’s, is Davenport’s inference from the subsidy rolls, where she appears beside “Roger, doubtless her son”.