♂John Washbourne

John Washbourne was a Worcestershire esquire of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, lord of Knight’s Washbourne, whose two marriages reshaped his family’s lands: through the first, the family’s manor of Stanford passed to the Salweys, and the second, to Margaret Poher, brought the Washbournes to Wichenford, which remained their home until about the time of the Restoration. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Norman Washbourne and, probably, Norman’s grandson John Washburn (died 1547).

Washbourne and Stanford

John was the son and heir of Peter Washbourne and Isolde Hanley, who had married in 1355. The family took its name from Little Washbourne, in the parish of Overbury, which came to be called Knight’s Washbourne after the family’s knights, and Stanford, on the far side of the county, had been theirs for at least 120 years.

By the account of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, written about 1640, John’s grandfather, also John, had an elder brother christened John as well, who married Katherine Thromwin and died without children, and John became that great-uncle’s heir, lord of Washbourne and Stanford. Katherine married again, to Sir John Musard, a knight who flourished in Worcestershire under Edward III, and their daughter, Joan Musard, became John’s first wife: he married the daughter of his great-uncle’s widow.

Joan bore John an only daughter, Isolde. John, “not lokinge into future eventes”, in Habington’s phrase, married her to John Salwey, a Staffordshire gentleman, and the family’s manor of Stanford, on the River Teme, passed with her to the Salweys, who held it by 1402. John Salwey kept it until his death in 1421, in his father-in-law’s lifetime. In the next generation John’s son Norman and John Salwey’s son Humfrey were at law for years, Humfrey claiming Knight’s Washbourne and Norman claiming Stanford, each as entailed upon himself. Only in 1479, after Norman’s death, did Norman’s son John and Humfrey seal an indenture to carry out an award made by George, Duke of Clarence^W: Stanford stayed with the Salweys, and Knight’s Washbourne came to Norman’s son, subject to a payment.

Wichenford

After the death of his first wife, Joan Musard, John married Margaret Poher, a daughter and co-heir of John Poher of Wichenford, and through her, about 1400, the Washbournes came to Wichenford. By Margaret, John had three children: Norman, his heir, John and Elynor.

John was one of the leading men of the county. He was escheator^W, the Crown’s officer who took charge of the lands of the king’s tenants when they died, in 1399–1400 and again in 1420–22. He sat on the commissions of the peace for Worcestershire in 1404 and 1405, and in 1404 he went to parliament as a knight of the shire^W.

On 16 July 1427 John granted Norman, as his son and heir, the old family manor of Knight’s Washbourne, to pass to the heirs male of his body, and failing them to John’s own heirs male. Because his own seal was unknown to many, he had the seal of the office of the bailiffs of the city of Worcester put to the deed, and at Washbourne, before the witnesses and with the tenants of the manor present, he put Norman in possession himself, by livery of seisin^W.

Death and burial

John was still living in July 1427, and the date of his death is not known. He and Margaret were buried in the chancel of Wichenford church, under an alabaster tomb on the north side, the oldest of four tombs that once stood there. It bore the figure of an armed man, bareheaded, with his helmet beneath his head, and on his right hand his wife, with a little dog at her feet. Its worn Latin inscription named John Washbourne, esquire, and Margery, his wife, and also Norman’s wife, Elizabeth, who probably died on 13 May 1454, the date it gave. A huge alabaster slab that served as a seat in the arbor of Wichenford vicarage until 1892, and was afterwards built into the north wall of the church’s sanctuary as a credence table^W, may be what is left of it.

Notes

Sources

John’s life rests on James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), which prints in full his charter of 16 July 1427 (Harleian MS 6139), granting Knight’s Washbourne to Norman, and quotes at length the two accounts of the family written by Thomas Habington about 1640, with his description of the tomb at Wichenford. John’s offices are from Nash’s history of Worcestershire and from Habington, as Davenport lists them; the date by which John Salwey held Stanford, 1402, is from Grazebrook, and the date of his death, 1421, from Habington. The clause on the seal and the delivery of the manor to Norman are in the charter itself, whose witnesses included Richard Oseney and Thomas Swyney, then bailiffs of Worcester; Davenport notes two seals on it, one showing the six martlets of the Washbourne arms.

His marriages

Habington calls the first wife both Jane and Joane Musard, and the second both Margery and Margaret. That Katherine Thromwin’s first husband was the elder of Sir Roger Washbourne’s two sons named John, and that John was his heir, is Habington’s account; Davenport’s table of the Thromwin, Musard and Salwey families agrees. Nash’s list of the incumbents of Stanford has Katerina Musard presenting in 1398 and Isolda Salwey in 1423. A date of 1397 for the marriage to Margaret, given without authority in Mrs. J. C. Washburn’s Notes of Washburn Genealogy, Davenport thought “no doubt approximately correct”; he dates the family’s arrival at Wichenford, “roughly speaking”, about 1400.

His offices

Davenport, citing Nash, also makes John vice-comes of the county in the twentieth year of Richard II (1396–97), when he was described as of Washborne in Overbury, and elsewhere calls him sheriff in that year. The word is the usual Latin for sheriff, but the shrievalty of Worcestershire was then hereditary in the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, whose deputies did the work, so which office John held is not clear. Habington adds a term as escheator in the thirteenth year of Richard II (1389–90), but Nash gives a Robert Badby as escheator that year.

His death

Habington took the date on the tomb, 13 May 1454, for John’s death. Davenport thought it “hardly likely, though possible” that John lived so long, since his father had married in 1355, and inclined to the belief that the person who died in 1454 was Elizabeth, the wife of Norman.

His children

Davenport gives the younger son, John, as “not traced, but possibly” the John Walsheborne appointed incumbent of Great Comberton on 15 December 1420, and has no particulars of Elynor.

His great-grandson John of Bengeworth

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of Norman’s son John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517) is John Washburn of Bengeworth, beside Evesham, who died in 1547, is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s; the 1517 will of John of Wichenford does not name him. In 1914 Barnard judged the identification “a reasonable probability” but “by no means a certainty”. The descent from John Washbourne is therefore given here as probable below Norman’s son John.