♂John Washbourne

John Washbourne (died 1517) was a Worcestershire esquire, lord of the manor of Wichenford, who in 1479 ended his father’s long quarrel with their Salwey kinsmen over two family manors by agreeing to carry out an award made by George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of King Edward IV. He was the thirteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), probably through his son John Washburn (died 1547).

Wichenford and Stanford

John was the son and heir of Norman Washbourne and Elizabeth Knivton, and was probably born by about 1454. The family had lived at Wichenford since about 1400, and for years his father and Humfrey Salwey of Stanford, a few miles away on the other side of the River Teme, had been at law with each other: Humfrey claimed the Washbournes’ manor of Knight’s Washbourne, and Norman claimed Stanford, each as entailed upon himself. The Duke of Clarence^W made an award between them, but it was never carried out, and the duke died in 1478.

Norman was dead by 1479. On 2 October that year, “by the mediacion of their frendes” and in “consideracion of the nyghnes of bloode” between them, John and Humfrey sealed an indenture to perform the late duke’s award. Stanford stayed with the Salweys, and Knight’s Washbourne came to John, subject to a payment. John was later named among the commissioners for raising the subsidies granted to the king in 1496–97 and 1513–14.

Marriages and children

His first wife was Joan Mitton, a daughter of William Mitton, lord of the manor of Weston under Lizard in Staffordshire. John and Joan had four sons, Robert, John, Walter and Francis. The Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, identified their second son John with John Washburn of Bengeworth, beside Evesham, though their father’s will of 1517 does not name him.

John married secondly Elizabeth, a daughter of a Monington of Butters in Herefordshire, and had two more sons by her, Anthony and Richard. His will also names a daughter, Ann.

Death

He made his will on 3 May 1517, asking to be buried in the chancel of St Michael’s church at Wichenford. He left ten shillings to the cathedral at Worcester, forty pence to the high altar of his own church, and the silk of his red damask gown to the parishioners, to be made into a cope^W for the church. His sons Robert and Richard were to have twenty pounds “to ther fynding to scole”, and his daughter Ann a hundred marks. His lands, already settled on trustees, were to pay his debts and clear his sureties to Thomas Acton of Stanford for seventy pounds, during the minority of his heir, his grandson John, the son of his late son Robert. His wife Elizabeth and his son Walter were his executors.

He died three days later, on 6 May 1517, and the will was proved on 3 November. An inquisition post mortem^W held at Kidderminster on 29 November 1518 found that he had held the manor of Wichenford, with lands in Bredon, Westmancote, Norton and Knight’s Washbourne, of the Bishop of Worcester, and other lands at Smyte and Eastham, and that his grandson John, seventeen and more at his death, was his heir.

He was buried at Wichenford. His tomb on the south side of the chancel could still be seen about 1640, an armed man with his wife beside him, its inscription naming him the son and heir of Norman Washbourne. The monument has since disappeared, probably when the church was reseated in 1841.

The family

Robert, the eldest son and heir, married Eleanor, daughter and heir of Walter Staples of Doddenham, whose lands there the antiquary Thomas Habington called “a good augmentation to the family after the diminution susteyned by a mache with Salewey”, the loss of Stanford. Robert died before his father, leaving two sons, John and Norman, and it was this John, aged seventeen in 1517, who became his grandfather’s heir.

Notes

Sources

His life rests on James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907). Davenport prints in full the 1479 indentures that settled the Stanford quarrel, John’s will of 3 May 1517 (in which he is “John Wassborn Esquyer”), and the inquisition taken after his death (Inquisitions post mortem, Series II, vol. 33, no. 68), which gives the day of his death as 6 May 1517. The account of his tomb is Habington’s, about 1640, as Davenport quotes it. Davenport adds that a 1514–15 subsidy commissioner written “Assheborne” was probably John as well.

His birth

Davenport reasoned that John must have been born by about 1454, if the date “1454” on his grandfather’s tomb at Wichenford referred to Norman or to Norman’s wife; no record of his birth or baptism survives, and the first Wichenford register, for 1539 to 1690, has been lost since 1781.

His children

The four sons by Joan Mitton and the two by Elizabeth Monington come from the heralds’ pedigrees, as Davenport gathers them. Only three sons, Robert, Walter and Richard, are named in the 1517 will, with the daughter Ann, who is not in the pedigrees. Davenport thought the will’s “Robert and Richard” at school a slip, since Robert was already dead, and suggested Anthony and Richard, the sons of the second marriage, were meant.

His son John of Bengeworth

That the John in the pedigrees is John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s. He supposed that John had left Wichenford as a younger son, “overlooked in the will”, to make his way near Evesham. In 1914 Barnard, writing on the Evesham Washbournes, judged that “although this identification seems a reasonable probability it is by no means a certainty”, since there is no direct evidence for it in the visitation pedigrees. The descent from John Washbourne of Wichenford is therefore given here as probable.