♂John Washburn

John Washburn (died before 12 July 1593) was a yeoman of Bengeworth, beside the town of Evesham in Worcestershire, who came into his parents’ house and lands there in 1547 and left a well-stocked farm at his death. He was the eleventh great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Washburn (died 1624).

Inheritance at Bengeworth

He was probably the son of John Washburn, a husbandman of Bengeworth, and his wife Eme. His father made his will on 27 December 1546, leaving Eme the houses, lands and grounds in the town and fields of Bengeworth for her life, and after her death to his son John and John’s heirs male. Out of that land John was to pay his sister Katherine Hide two strike^W of wheat a year for as long as she lived. He was already a father by then: the will also remembers his two children.

His father was buried in January 1546/7. Eme made her own will on 1 May 1547, naming him her executor and leaving the rest of her goods for him to dispose of “for the welthe of my soule & all Christen soules”; she was buried on 13 May, and the house and lands passed to him that spring.

He most likely married twice in Bengeworth: first Joan Bushell (written Jone in the register), in April 1542, and after her death Jone Whithead, on 8 May 1561. The second Jone was buried in 1567.

Death and estate

He died in 1593. On 12 July his son John gave bond as administrator of the goods of “Iohn Washburne his Father late decessed of Bengworth”, under letters of administration^W granted that day. The parish register enters his burial on 13 October 1593, a month that cannot be right if the estate was already being administered in July.

The inventory taken on 20 September 1593 calls him “Iohn Wasborne thelder”, to set him apart from his son. It describes the house room by room: glass in the windows of the hall and the chamber, thirty small cheeses in the lofts, a malt mill in the kitchen, and a dozen silver spoons. Outside there was corn in the barns and ricks, with three plows, three harrows, five horses, six cows and four young beasts.

Notes

Sources

His life rests on James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), which prints the wills of John (1546) and Eme (1547) of Bengeworth from the probate registry at Worcester, the 1593 administration bond and inventory, and the Washbourne entries of the Bengeworth register. The father’s will names his son John as heir and leaves a bequest to each of John’s two children; Eme’s will, proved at Evesham on 15 June 1547, makes “John Wasbord my sone” her executor. That the John who died in 1593 is this son is Davenport’s reading of the register and the wills: he sets out “four generations of Johns at Bengeworth” and places this man second.

His wives and children

The register records the two marriages of a John Wasborne, in 1542 and 1561, and Davenport gives both to this John, with the death of Jone Bushell in the regnal year 3 and 4 Philip and Mary (1556–57). He suggests a third wife, the mother of Radegonne, Daniell and Mary, christened between 1579 and 1584 as children of a John Wasborne; with two men of that name then living in the parish, whose children these were is uncertain. The son John who administered the estate in 1593 has no baptism on record. Davenport puts his birth after December 1546 and suggests he may be the unnamed boy christened on 1 August 1556, which would make Jone Bushell his mother.

The burial date

Davenport, beside the register’s “1593. 13 Oct. John Wasborne, bur.”, writes: “This month is incorrect as Letters of Administration were granted to his son John on July 12th … The entry in the register is clear and distinct.” His death is therefore placed before 12 July 1593.

The Wichenford descent

Davenport took John and Eme to be the founders of a Bengeworth branch of the Washbournes of Little Washbourne and Wichenford, suggesting that John had left Wichenford as a younger son to make his way near Evesham. That descent is probably right: it rests on Davenport’s identification, which Barnard, writing in 1914, called “a reasonable probability” but “by no means a certainty”.