♂John de Averenges

John de Averenges (about 1229 – 8 November 1257) was an English landholder who held the manors of Kings Brompton in Somerset and Radcot in Oxfordshire of the king in chief. He died before he was thirty, leaving three small daughters as his heirs, and the king sold the wardship of his lands and of his daughters’ marriages to two of his yeomen. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Elizabeth de Averenges (1254–1315).

Inheritance and marriage

John was the son and heir of Joan, known as Joan de Ferrers, who held Kings Brompton and Radcot of the king in chief, with land at Grafton in Oxfordshire. She died in 1252, and the inquest^W on the king’s writ of 16 November found that “John de Everenges alias de Averenges, her son, aged 23, is her heir”. The manors came to him.

He married Amice, whose family is not known. Their daughters Joan, Margaret and Elizabeth were born about 1248, 1251 and 1254.

Death and the wardship

John died on Thursday, 8 November 1257. The inquest on the king’s writ of 13 November found that he “died on Thursday before St. Martin last. His daughters, Joan aged 9, Margaret aged 6, and Elizabeth aged 3, are his heirs”. It dealt too with Amice’s quarantine at Radcot, the forty days a widow was allowed to stay on in her husband’s chief house after his death.

Because John had held land of the king in chief^W, the Crown took charge of his lands and of his daughters’ marriages, and the king sold that wardship to two of his yeomen, William de Renham and Emery Bezill. The bargain brought them quarrels and lawsuits, and in 1259 the king let them keep it without payment. The youngest daughter, Elizabeth, married Matthias Bessiles, a king’s yeoman, and through her Radcot and Kings Brompton passed to the Bessiles family.

More than a century after John’s death, his great-grandson Thomas Bessiles won the manor of Buckland in Berkshire in the Court of Common Pleas^W by pleading that John had been the son of William d’Averenches and his wife Maud, a daughter of William de Buckland. His mother’s inquest of 1252 names her as Joan.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Elizabeth and her son Geoffrey Bessiles 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 John.

Notes

Sources for his life

His life comes from the inquests on his mother (writ of 16 November 1252, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 1, no. 268) and on himself (writ of 13 November 1257, vol. 1, no. 407), and from the patent roll entry of 1259 on the wardship, abstracted in J. Renton Dunlop’s “The Besils Family of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Somerset” in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Note 5. The Complete Peerage (2nd edition, vol. 5, the family chart in the article on the earldom of Essex) gives him as “John d’Averenches, of Radcot”, died 8 November 1257, husband of Amice. The surname is also written Averenches, Avereng’, Averences, Averinges and Everenges. His mother’s inquest calls Kings Brompton “Brumpton” and Radcot “Redcot”.

His date of death

His inquest says he died on the Thursday before St Martin’s day. The feast of St Martin, 11 November, fell on a Sunday in 1257, so the Thursday before was 8 November, the date the Complete Peerage also gives.

His parents

The 1252 inquest names Joan de Ferres alias de Ferrers as his mother. The Complete Peerage makes her a daughter of William de Buckland and the widow of Robert de Ferrers (died 1225; Dunlop gives 1224), and shows John as her son by a second husband, Geoffrey d’Averenches, who was living on 26 November 1236. Dunlop surmises that Joan’s second husband was one of the brothers of William d’Averenches the elder, named Simon, Roger and Geoffrey, “possibly the last named”, since John’s daughter Elizabeth named her only son Geoffrey. No record on hand names 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 settles John’s mother.