♂John Washbourne

John Washbourne was a fourteenth-century member of the Worcestershire family that took its name from Little Washbourne, in the parish of Overbury. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Peter Washbourne.

Family

John was probably the younger son of Sir Roger Washbourne, lord of Washbourne, and his wife, Margaret, whom he had married by 1316. Sir Roger had two sons, both christened John, and the elder, who married Katherine Thromwin, died without children. John’s wife was named Isabelle, and their son, Peter, married Isolde Hanley in 1355. Nothing more is known of John’s own life, but his line carried on the family’s lands: it was Peter’s son John who became the heir of the elder John, and so lord of Washbourne and Stanford.

Lines of descent

The line from Peter to Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) runs, probably, through Peter’s great-great-grandson John Washburn (died 1547).

Notes

Sources

John is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), p. 8, which follows the two College of Arms pedigrees of the family and the accounts of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, written about 1640. Of John, Davenport writes that “little is forthcoming”: he was the younger son of Sir Roger, his wife’s name was Isabelle, and his elder brother, also called John, died without issue. In Habington’s words, “Sir Roger de Washborn, sonne of Sir John de Washborn, had towe sonnes, bothe christened John”; he names John’s grandson as “John Washborn, the sonne of Peter de Washborn, the sonne of John Washborn, the youngest sonne of Sir Roger de Washborn”, and makes that grandson the heir of the elder John, “his nephew’s sonne”. Davenport cites no record of John’s own life.

His mother

Davenport writes that Sir Roger “married his wife Margaret as early as 1316”, but he does not say which wife was the mother of either son; that Margaret was John’s mother is probable rather than shown.

A grant to “John his son”

The College of Arms pedigree, as Davenport quotes it, records that “Roger Washborne Lord of Washborne, knight, did confirm to John his son” in the ninth year of Edward III (1335–36). Which of the two Johns is meant is not said.

The descent below Peter’s great-grandson John

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of 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 does not name him. The descent from John is therefore given here as probable below that generation.