♂John Botetourt

John Botetourt^W (died 25 November 1324) was an English knight, soldier and commander at sea under Edward I and Edward II, who rose from the king’s household to be summoned to Parliament as the first Lord Botetourt. He was the nineteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Thomas Botetourt (died 1322).

The king’s household

John began his career in the 1270s as a falconer in the royal household, and in 1282 he went to war in Wales as a squire of the household. From 1291 to 1308 he was Warden of the Forest of Dean and Constable of St Briavels Castle in Gloucestershire. In 1294, when French galleys threatened to raid the south coast, the king made two of his household knights, William de Leybourne and John, captain and sub-captain of the fleet. In the following year, by Richardson’s account, the two men were described as admirals, the first use of the word in England. In 1296 John commanded 94 ships gathered from the ports between Harwich and King’s Lynn, most of them from Yarmouth.

The Scottish wars

In 1298 he went to Scotland with his younger brother Guy, and in 1300 he was at the Siege of Caerlaverock^W, where the poet who put the siege into verse called him “light of heart and doing good to all.” He was one of the barons who set their seals to the Barons’ Letter of 1301^W to the Pope. In 1304 he led a raid into Nithsdale with 130 horsemen and 1,770 foot, and the king ordered him to help Robert de Brus, then on the English side, move a great siege engine toward Stirling. The next year he was made one of the justices of trailbaston^W and was sent to treat with the Scots, and in 1307 he led another raid against them. In 1314 he commanded the fleet in the expedition against Scotland and was Governor of Framlingham Castle. Not every recruit pleased him: in 1315 he complained that the men raised for his company were “feeble chaps, not strong enough, not properly dressed, and lacking bows and arrows.”

Lord Botetourt

From 13 July 1305 to 13 September 1324 he was summoned to Parliament by writs addressed to Johanni Botetourt, and by these he is held to have become Lord Botetourt. By June 1292 he had married Maud, the daughter of Thomas Fitz Otes of Mendlesham in Suffolk and the heiress of her brother, Otes. Through her came the manor of Mendlesham, a third of the barony of Bedford, a string of other manors and the hereditary office of coiner of the Mint; when he died, all of his lands were found to be held in her right. In 1318 John and Maud complained that the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds and many others had come to Tivetshall in Norfolk, where Maud and some of John’s servants were lodging, raised a hue and cry against them, thrown them out of the inn, carried off John’s goods and beaten the servants.

Rebellion and last years

In the quarrels of Edward II’s reign John joined the rebellion of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster^W, and fought at the Battle of Boroughbridge^W on 16 March 1321/2. He was fined £1,000 and pardoned on 8 October 1322. In 1323 he and Maud conveyed the manor of Isenhampstead in Buckinghamshire to Hugh le Despenser the younger^W, and in 1324 he paid the Italian bankers, the Peruzzi, 100 marks, apparently for a debt he owed Despenser.

John died on 25 November 1324. His eldest son and heir, Thomas, had died two years before him, so the barony passed to Thomas’s son, John, a boy of seven. Maud survived her husband by some four years.

The family

John and Maud had four sons, Thomas, John, Otes and Robert, and three daughters, Joan, Ada and Elizabeth. Elizabeth married William le Latimer, Lord Latimer, and Maud settled her share of the barony of Bedford on the couple in 1328. In 1330 their son Otes founded a chantry at Mendlesham, giving a house, 30 acres and 30 shillings of rent for a chaplain to say mass in the parish church for the souls of his parents.

Lines of descent

From Thomas, the line runs through his son John Botetourt (died 1386) and John’s daughter Joyce. It probably continues to John Washburn (died 1547) of Bengeworth, whom the pedigrees name as a son of Joan Mitton, a descendant of Joyce.

Notes

Sources

John’s career, his marriage and Maud’s inheritance, the Tivetshall complaint, his part in Lancaster’s rebellion, his dealings with Despenser, his death and his children are given by Douglas Richardson in Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd edition), pp. 337-339. The Complete Peerage, vol. II (1912), pp. 233-235, agrees on his command at St Briavels, his time as admiral for the northern seas (1294-1297, and again in 1315), the letter of 1301, his summonses, Framlingham, Boroughbridge, the fine and the pardon, his marriage and his death on 25 November 1324; its note quotes J. H. Round that the whole of his lands were held in right of his wife. Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 116, names him as the first Lord Botetourt and the grandfather to whom the younger John was heir in 1324.

His parentage

The Complete Peerage (1912) calls him “John de Botetourt, whose parentage is unknown.” Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry makes him the son and heir of Sir Guy Botetourt of Ellingham in Norfolk (died about 1316) and his wife, Ada, following an article by F. N. Craig in The American Genealogist 63 (1988), pp. 145-153. The evidence is the passage of Guy’s manors of Ellingham, Uphall and Upton to John and his heirs, and the brothers who appear beside him: Roger, called in 1324 “the son of the noble man Sir Guy Buttetourte,” whom John presented to the church of Great Bradley; Robert, a priest; Guy, who went with him to Scotland; and Ralph and Thomas, who joined their parents in Norfolk fines.

His marriage and Maud’s death

The Complete Peerage gives the marriage as most likely soon after 1 July 1285, when Maud was a minor, and certainly before June 1292; Richardson prints “before June 1282.” Richardson gives Maud’s death as shortly before 27 November 1328, while the Complete Peerage says she was living on 28 May 1329.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joan Mitton, a descendant of Thomas’s granddaughter Joyce Botetourt, 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.