♀Joan (surname unknown)

Joan (died before 16 November 1252), known as Joan de Ferrers, was an English landholder who held the manors of Brumpton in Somerset and Radcot in Oxfordshire of the king in chief^W. At her death the manors passed to her son John de Averenges, and through his youngest daughter, Elizabeth, to the Bessiles family. She was the twenty-first great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son John de Averenges (1229–1257).

Family

Joan was probably one of the daughters and coheirs of William de Buckland, of Buckland in Berkshire. Her first husband was most likely Robert de Ferrers, who died on 4 December 1225 without children, and whose name she still bore at her death. She married again, and her son John was born about 1229; his father is thought to have been Geoffrey d’Averenches, who was living in November 1236.

More than a century after her death, her great-great-grandson Thomas Bessiles won the manor of Buckland by pleading a descent that left her out. In the Court of Common Pleas^W between 1367 and 1374 he made her son John the child of William d’Averenches and his wife Maud, a daughter of William de Buckland, and two juries found for him. Joan’s own inquest^W of 1252 names her as John’s mother.

Death

Joan died in 1252, shortly before 16 November, when the king’s writ went out for the inquest into her lands. The jurors found that she had held Brumpton as half a knight’s fee^W and three parts of a hide at Radcot, both of the king, with land at Grafton in Oxfordshire held of a prior, and that “John de Everenges alias de Averenges, her son, aged 23, is her heir”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son John and his daughter Elizabeth de Averenges down to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They part among the Dudleys and meet again in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both descend from Joan.

Notes

Sources for her life

Her death and her lands come from her inquest on the king’s writ of 16 November 1252 (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 1, no. 268), which heads her “Joan de Ferres alias de Ferrers” and spells Radcot “Redcot”. J. Renton Dunlop quotes the original inquest (Chancery Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry III, file 14/3) in “Descent of the Manor of Boclond, Berkshire” in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25). The surname of her son is also written Averenches, Averences, Averinges and Everenges.

Her parents and marriages

The Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, the family chart in the article on the earldom of Essex) shows Joan as a daughter of William de Buckland, with sisters Maud, wife of William d’Averenches of Folkestone, and Hawise, wife of John de Boville. It gives her first husband as Robert de Ferrers, died 4 December 1225 without issue, and her second as Geoffrey d’Averenches, living 26 November 1236, and shows John d’Averenches of Radcot as her son. Dunlop calls her the second daughter and coheir of William de Buckland and the widow of Robert de Ferrers, “whom she outlived for many years”, and gives Robert’s death as 1224. He surmises that her second husband was one of the brothers of William d’Averenches the elder, named Simon, Roger and Geoffrey, “possibly the last named”, since her granddaughter Elizabeth named her only son Geoffrey. The Victoria County History of Berkshire (vol. 4, West Hall in Buckland) also has “Joan de Ferrers, daughter of William de Buckland”. None of these works cites a record naming John’s father.

The Buckland pleas

In pleas in the Court of Common Pleas between 1367 and 1374 (De Banco Rolls 428 and 454), Thomas Bessiles claimed Buckland as heir of Maud, wife of William d’Averenches and eldest daughter and coheir of William de Buckland, representing John as their son, and two juries found for him. The Victoria County History of Berkshire (vol. 4, Buckland) quotes the jury’s descent: “Thomas Bessels as son of Geoffrey, son of Elizabeth, daughter of John, son of William Davranches and Maud daughter of William de Buckland”. Dunlop calls the claim wrong: William and Maud had only two children, William, who died under age about 1237, and Maud, who carried the barony of Folkestone and Buckland to her husband Hamo de Crevequer. The 1252 inquest on Joan, which names John as her son and heir, settles his mother.