♀Katherine de Legh

Katherine de Legh (died 25 February 1406) was an English heiress, a daughter of John de Legh of Kingston in Warwickshire, and married the knight Thomas Bessiles. She outlived her husband by more than twenty-seven years, and when she died the inquests into her lands in Oxfordshire and Berkshire were held before her own son, Sir Peter Bessiles, as the king’s escheator: the officer whose task was to find what land a dead tenant had held of the crown and who was the heir, so that here the heir sat over the inquiry into his own inheritance. She was the seventeenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through her son Peter Bessiles (1363–1425).

Family and marriage

Katherine was the daughter of John de Legh and his wife Hawise, of Kingston, also called Chesterton, in Warwickshire. Her father also held the manor of Leigh in Berkshire, and had a royal charter of free warren^W over his demesne lands at both places.

Thomas and Katherine de Legh were married by 25 April 1359, when the chaplain Walter in le Hurne gave them the manor of Grafton, with a house at Clanfield and a rent from the mill and fishery at Radcot. In January 1360 Buckland was settled so that, after the life of Eleanor, widow of John Giffard of Bures, it would come to Thomas and Katherine for their lives and then to their son John; in 1366 Thomas settled it again on himself, Katherine and the heirs of their bodies. They had two sons, John and Peter, the younger born on 24 June 1363.

Widowhood

Thomas died on 9 September 1378, and a third of Radcot was assigned to Katherine as her dower^W, with a third of Kings Brompton in Somerset. Their son John, the heir, died before he came of age, and his own young son John died on 28 November 1382. While the rest of Radcot was in the king’s hands during these minorities, Katherine occupied it under the king’s letters patent, paying him a rent. In 1384 Peter proved his age and took his father’s lands.

Death

Katherine died on 25 February 1406, the Thursday after the feast of St Matthias. Besides her dower she held lands at Hurtescombe and Wolfcote given to her and Thomas by Walter in le Hurne, a house in Oxford held of the king in free burgage^W, and, jointly with Peter, a house and a carucate of land at Carswell in Berkshire. The Somerset inquest^W was taken at Dunster on 16 April 1406; those for Oxfordshire, at Oxford, and for Berkshire, at Abingdon, were taken before Peter as escheator, and all three named him her heir. Peter later held Kingston, and when he died in 1425 his heir there was traced through her family: Robert Cramford, a grandson of her father’s sister Alice.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through her son Peter Bessiles, Peter’s son Thomas Bessiles, Thomas’s son William Bessiles (1444–1515), William’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, her daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for her life

Everything here comes from J. Renton Dunlop’s “The Besils Family of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Somerset” in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Notes 20, 21, 24 and 25, which abstracts the inquisitions post mortem on her husband (1378–79), her grandson (1384), herself (1406, Henry IV, file 54) and her son Peter (1425), with the Charter and Close Rolls. Her death is also in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, volume 19. Peter’s 1425 heir is named as in volume 22 of the Calendar (no. 447), “Robert Cramford”; Dunlop spells him Cranford. Dunlop takes her parentage from Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire, vol. i, pp. 482–483.

Her son’s age

Her three inquests give Peter as “aged 30 and more” (Somerset), “aged 36 and more” (Oxfordshire) and “aged 40 and more” (Berkshire). His proof of age shows that he turned twenty-one on St John the Baptist’s day 1384, so he was in fact forty-two.