♂John Washburn

John Washburn (buried 8 January 1546/47) was a husbandman^W of Bengeworth, beside the town of Evesham in Worcestershire, who made his will in the last weeks of Henry VIII’s reign and left his houses and lands there to his wife Eme for her life, and after her to their son John and his heirs male. He was the twelfth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Washburn (died before 12 July 1593).

Family and will

John and Eme had two sons, William and John, and two daughters, Alice, the wife of Robert Marten, and Katherine, the wife of Daniel Hide. By the end of 1546 all four were married, and there were eight grandchildren: two each from William and John, three from Alice and one from Katherine.

He made his will on 27 December 1546, sick in body, asking to be buried in the parish church of Bengeworth with a “solempne dirige & masse”, and leaving the church two strike^W of wheat and two of barley. Each son had a cistern, a cart bridle and a mattock, and each grandchild a small gift of money. Everything else, with the houses, lands and grounds in the town and fields of Bengeworth, went to Eme for life. The land was then to pass to John and his heirs male, who were to pay William 6s 8d a year out of it; William was to give his sister Alice two strike of wheat a year, and John the same to Katherine. If neither son left a male heir, it was to go to John’s eldest daughter. He named Eme his sole executrix and his son William one of the two overseers.

He was buried at Bengeworth on 8 January 1546/47, and his goods were valued at £27 8s 8d. Eme made her own will on 1 May 1547 and was buried at Bengeworth on 13 May. The house and lands then passed to their son John, most likely the John Washburn who farmed at Bengeworth until his death in 1593.

Notes

Sources

His life rests on James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), which prints in full his will, in which he is “John Wassheburne”, and Eme’s, both from the probate registry at Worcester, with the Washbourne entries of the Bengeworth register: “1546. 8 Jan. John Wasborne Bur.” and “1547. 13 May Emme Wasborne Bur.” The year then began on 25 March, so the January burial falls in 1546/47. The will is dated in the thirty-eighth year of Henry VIII; the king died at the end of January 1547.

His son John

The will names a son John as heir to the land. That this son is the John Washburn of Bengeworth who died in 1593 is Davenport’s reading of the register and the wills, which he sets out as “four generations of Johns at Bengeworth”, with this man as the first.

The Wichenford descent

Davenport suggested that John came to Bengeworth from Wichenford, as a younger son of the Washbournes of Little Washbourne and Wichenford. 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”.