♀Joyce Botetourt

Joyce Botetourt (died 12 August 1420) was a daughter of John Botetourt, 2nd Lord Botetourt^W, and the wife first of Sir Baldwin de Freville of Tamworth and then of Sir Adam Peshale^W of Weston under Lizard in Staffordshire. Widowed twice, she died less than a year after her second husband and a week after her daughter Margaret. She was the sixteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Margaret Peshale (about 1393–1420).

Family and first marriage

Joyce was one of the six daughters of John Botetourt, 2nd Lord Botetourt, of Weoley in Worcestershire, who died in 1386, and his wife, Joyce la Zouche. Before 1368 she married Baldwin de Freville of Tamworth in Warwickshire, who had been born about 1349. They had one son, Baldwin, later Sir Baldwin Freville of Tamworth. She and Baldwin belonged to the Trinity Guild of Coventry. Sir Baldwin de Freville died on 30 December 1387.

Marriage to Adam Peshale

Less than a year later, before 11 November 1388, Joyce married Sir Adam Peshale, a knight of Weston under Lizard who sat in Parliament for Shropshire and Staffordshire, as his third wife. They had married without the king’s license, and a pardon for it was granted on 28 May 1389. They had two daughters, Joan and Margaret. Margaret married Sir Richard Mitton in or before 1406 and was given the manors of Hagley and Tamhorn as her marriage portion. Adam and Joyce were members together of the Trinity Guild of Coventry, whose register enters them as “Adam, Lord Pethsale, Knight, and Jacosa his wife”.

Last years

In 1407 Joyce became one of the co-heiresses of her niece and namesake, Joyce Botetourt, the wife of Hugh Burnell, Lord Burnell. Her share brought her the manor of Bobbington in Staffordshire and the reversion of the manors of Newport Pagnell and Linford in Buckinghamshire and of other manors in Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire, that is, the right to them when the present holders’ interests came to an end. In 1419 Adam and Joyce sold the reversion of the Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire properties to Joan Beauchamp, Lady Bergavenny, for perhaps as much as 1,000 marks.

Adam died on 26 October 1419. Joyce outlived him by less than a year: their daughter Margaret died on 5 August 1420, and Joyce a week later, on 12 August 1420. On 22 March 1437 Margaret’s son, William Mitton, was given seisin^W of the lands that had belonged to his parents and to his grandmother Joyce.

Lines of descent

Joyce’s line to Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) runs through her daughter Margaret Peshale, whose son William Mitton had a daughter, Joan Mitton. Joan’s son John Washburn (died 1547) is probably the John Washburn who carries the line on, and from him it runs down through the Washburn and Blanchard families to Nancy.

Notes

Sources

Joyce’s parentage, both marriages, her son and daughters, the pardon of 1389, her inheritance of 1407, the sale of 1419 and the couple’s death dates are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005) and Plantagenet Ancestry (2011). He cites among others the Botetourt pedigrees in Blore’s history of Rutland (1811), the register of the Coventry guild, Canon Bridgeman’s history of Weston-under-Lizard (1899) and the Complete Peerage (1912). The date of her first marriage and her membership of the guild with both husbands are from Plantagenet Ancestry.

Her daughters

The Botetourt pedigree in the Complete Peerage (1912) marks Joyce’s marriage to Sir Adam Peshall as without issue. The volume of corrections published in 1998 amends this to without male issue and adds that the couple had two daughters and coheirs, Joan, wife of Sir William Birmingham, and Margaret, wife of Sir Richard Mytton, on the authority of Canon Bridgeman’s history of Weston-under-Lizard.

Two Joyce Botetourts

Joyce is a different woman from her niece of the same name, Joyce Botetourt, the daughter of her brother John and the wife of Hugh Burnell, Lord Burnell, whose co-heiress she became in 1407. Burke’s Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited and Extinct Peerages (1883) confuses the two, as Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry points out.

Her death date

The Peshall pedigree in the Staffordshire visitations of 1614 and 1663–64 gives Joyce’s death as 1455 and Adam’s as 1439. Richardson gives 12 August 1420 and 26 October 1419.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Margaret’s granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.