♂John de Legh

John de Legh (died after 1348) was an English landholder, lord of the manor of Kingston in Warwickshire and of Leigh in Berkshire. His two sons left no children, and his lands passed with his daughter Katherine to the Bessiles family. In 1425, when his grandson Sir Peter Bessiles died with no lawful child, the inquest juries traced Peter’s heir back through John himself, to John’s sister Alice. He was the eighteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Katherine de Legh (died 1406).

Lands

John was probably the son of William de Legh, who held Kingston, in the parish of Chesterton in Warwickshire, in the 1290s, and he succeeded William in both manors; he was lord of Leigh by 1327. In the sixth year of Edward III’s reign (1332–33) he obtained a royal charter of free warren^W over his demesne lands at Kingston and at Leye in Berkshire. On 29 March 1337, as “John de Leigh of Kingston”, he was the creditor in a statute merchant^W taken before the Mayor of Oxford, by which Robert, son of Robert de Rokele of Leigh, acknowledged a debt to him of £30.

Family and heirs

John and Hawise were married by 1339, the year in which, by the Warwickshire county history, John settled the manor of Kingston on himself, his wife Hawise and his own heirs. They had two sons, William and Roger, who were living in 1348 but died without children, and a daughter, Katherine, who became her father’s heir and married the knight Thomas Bessiles. John was still living in 1348, when he and his sons appear in a suit in the Court of Common Pleas^W; nothing later is known of him. The sons perhaps died in the Black Death, which reached England that year.

Katherine’s son Sir Peter Bessiles (1363–1425) later held Kingston, and the Berkshire manor came to be called Bessels Leigh after the family. When Peter died in 1425 without a lawful child, the Warwick inquest named as his heir Robert Cramford, “son of Margaret daughter of Alice sister of John father of Katherine mother of this Peter”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Katherine, her son Peter Bessiles, Peter’s son Thomas Bessiles, Thomas’s son William Bessiles (1444–1515), William’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, her daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for his life

The 1337 debt is a certificate of statute merchant in the Chancery records at The National Archives (C 241/115/350); the catalogue adds “[Berks.]” to the entry, but the creditor’s Kingston is the Warwickshire manor. The 1339 settlement, the suit of 1348 naming his sons and his being alive that year come from the Victoria County History of Warwickshire, vol. 5 (1949), pp. 42–46, under Chesterton, which cites the feet of fines^W, the Patent Rolls (1348–50, p. 91) and the plea roll of Michaelmas term, 22 Edward III. The Victoria County History of Berkshire, vol. 4 (1924), under Bessels Leigh, has him lord of Leigh in 1327 and “still living in 1348”. The charter of free warren is from J. Renton Dunlop’s account of the Besils family in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Note 21, citing the Charter Rolls. The 1425 inquest on Sir Peter Bessiles, taken at Warwick on 12 May 1425, is calendared in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 22, no. 447.

His parentage

The Warwickshire history calls his predecessor William de Leigh (living 1292–1296) “apparently son and heir of Thomas de Leigh” and says he “was succeeded by John de Leigh”; the Berkshire history calls John “evidently the heir of William”. Dunlop makes John the son of a William “who had possession of Kingston in 36 Henry III” (1252), but that was an earlier William, living 1220–1247. The Warwickshire history also mentions a Thomas de Leigh in 1332, “said to have been his brother”; nothing else connects him to the family.

Heir or coheir

Dunlop calls Katherine a “coheir” of her father. The Warwickshire history makes her his heir after her brothers’ deaths, and the 1425 inquest traces the next heir through John’s sister rather than through any other child of his.