♀Isolde Hanley

Isolde Hanley was the wife of Peter Washbourne. She was the sixteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son John Washbourne.

The Hanleys at Hanley William

Isolde was the daughter of a family that held land at Hanley William, in the parish of Eastham, Worcestershire, and her marriage to Peter Washbourne is probably dated to 1355, the twenty-ninth year of Edward III.

The Hanleys held land at Hanley William by the 1280s. The heralds’ pedigrees name Isolde’s father Thomas Hanley, while the county’s early historians call him John. In the account of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, the Hanleys’ time at Hanley William came to its end with Isolde’s marriage.

Her children and the Washbourne lands

Lands at Eastham were still in the Washbournes’ hands when her great-grandson John Washbourne of Wichenford died in 1517. Peter and Isolde had two sons: John, their heir, and William, of whom nothing more is recorded. Their son John became the heir of Peter’s uncle, the elder John, and so lord of Washbourne and Stanford.

Lines of descent

Isolde’s line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her son John Washbourne, then through John’s son Norman Washbourne, and then through Norman’s son John Washbourne of Wichenford, who died in 1517. The line continues, probably, to John Washburn, who died in 1547 and is named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of John of Wichenford.

Notes

Sources

Isolde is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), p. 8, which follows the two College of Arms pedigrees of the Washbournes and quotes Habington, who wrote about 1640, and Grazebrook. The marriage is dated to the twenty-ninth year of Edward III, which ran from January 1355 to January 1356. Grazebrook, as Davenport quotes him, has Thomas de Hanley holding lands in Hanley William in the thirteenth year of Edward I (1284–85), and quotes Nash that several branches “proceeded from this stock of the Hanleys: the first was by a marriage between Peter de Washborne and Isold, daughter of John Hanley”.

Her father

Both College of Arms pedigrees name Isolde’s father Thomas Hanley; Habington, Nash and Phillimore all give him as John Hanley. Neither name is given here as fact.

The Eastham lands

That the Eastham property came to the Washbournes with Isolde is Davenport’s judgment (“probably”), made from the lands named in the 1517 inquisition after the death of John Washbourne of Wichenford (p. 34) and repeated for a later generation (p. 69).

The descent below Norman’s son John

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517) is John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s; the 1517 will does not name him. The descent from Isolde is therefore given here as probable below that generation.