♀Joyce la Zouche

Joyce la Zouche (living in 1375/6) was an English noblewoman, the only daughter of Sir William la Zouche Mortimer, Lord Zouche, and Alice de Tony, who married John Botetourt, 2nd Lord Botetourt^W, of Weoley in Worcestershire. She was the seventeenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Joyce Botetourt (died 1420).

Life

Joyce had three brothers, Alan, Robert and, it seems, Philip. Her mother died shortly before 8 January 1324/5, and her father on 28 February 1336/7. Before 31 May 1347 she married John Botetourt, a knight who had inherited his grandfather’s barony as a boy, fought in the French wars and was summoned to Parliament from 1342 to 1385. Joyce was still living in 1375/6. Her husband died in 1386 and was buried at Halesowen in Worcestershire.

The family

John and Joyce had one son and six daughters. Their only son, John Botetourt, married Maud de Grey and died overseas on 21 September 1369, in his father’s lifetime. Of the daughters, Maud and Agnes became nuns, and Isabel married first Sir Hugh de Segrave and then Sir Thomas Blount.

Lines of descent

Joyce’s line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through her daughter Joyce Botetourt and on through Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton. Joan was probably the mother of John Washburn of Bengeworth (died 1547), Joyce’s great-great-grandson, whose descent is set out in the Notes.

Notes

Sources

Joyce’s parents, her brothers, her marriage, her children and the dates of her parents’ deaths are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), whose Botetourt chapter runs from Henry de Bohun and Maud de Mandeville through their son Humphrey de Bohun and the Tony family to Joyce and her husband. The Complete Peerage (1912) also names her as the daughter of William Zouche, formerly Mortimer, and the wife of John, Lord Botetourt. Her son’s marriage and death abroad are from Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry.

Her last mention

Richardson has her living in 1375/6; the Complete Peerage has her living on 4 May 1372. The date of her death is not known.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-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.