♂John Poher

John Poher, commonly called Powre, was lord of Wichenford, in Worcestershire, and the father of two daughters, Agnes and Margaret, who were his co-heirs; through Margaret the Washbournes came to Wichenford, which remained their home for some two and a half centuries. He was the sixteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Margaret Poher.

Family

The Pohers were an old Worcestershire family, said to have come to England with William the Conqueror. They held lands across the county and gave the manor of Batenhall to the Priory of Worcester. John was the son of Roger Poher and Maud Thyn, a daughter and heir of Nicholas Thyn and the heir of her brother, Richard Thyn of Ashton.

His daughters

Agnes married James de Habington, the fourth of his family to live at Wichenford, and Margaret became the second wife of John Washbourne, lord of Knight’s Washbourne, so that, apparently at about the same time, both of the great families of Wichenford, the Habingtons and the Washbournes, married into the Pohers. The Habingtons had been there for more than a century; the Washbournes came with Margaret, about 1400. In 1632 the monument that John Washbourne raised in the chancel of Wichenford church to his father, himself and his two wives still bore the arms of Poher, quartered with the Washbournes’ own. The line to Nancy runs on through Margaret’s grandson John Washbourne of Wichenford and, probably, his younger son John Washburn of Bengeworth (died 1547).

Notes

Sources

John is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), which quotes two accounts written by the antiquary Thomas Habington^W about 1640: in one, Margaret is the “daughter and coheyre of John Poher, commonly called Powre of Wicheneford”, in the other the “daughter and coheyre of John Poher, Lord of Wichenford”. Davenport also prints the Poher pedigree from the College of Arms pedigree of the Washbournes and from Phillimore’s edition of Habington’s pedigrees. Both make John the son of Roger le Poher and Maud, or Matilda, the daughter and heir of Nicholas Thyn and sister and heir of Richard Thyn of Ashton, and both make Margaret his daughter; Phillimore’s alone also gives Agnes, the wife of James de Habington, while the College of Arms pedigree calls Margaret simply daughter and heir. The account of the family and its lands is Grazebrook’s, quoting Nash’s history of Worcestershire, which is also the source of the story that the Pohers came over with the Conqueror.

The John le Poher of Edward III’s reign

Grazebrook adds that a John le Poher held a moiety (half) of the manor of Wichenford in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II, having inherited it from the Chamberlains. He does not say whether this John is the father of Agnes and Margaret.

His name

The surname is written Poher, le Poher, Power, le Power and Powre.

The Poher arms

Grazebrook gives the Poher arms as gules, a fesse or, in chief two mullets argent. Habington, describing the 1632 monument, lists them as the second quarter of the Washbourne arms, “Poher or Powre”.

The line to the Washburns of Bengeworth

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of Margaret’s grandson 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 of John of Wichenford names only three of his six sons, and John is not among them. The descent from John Poher is therefore given here as probable below that John of Wichenford.