♀Margaret Farway

Margaret Farway (died before 1421) was the elder daughter of John Farway of Penhallam^W, in Jacobstow, Cornwall, and married Thomas Seymour, the heir of Sir Edmund Seymour of Tickenham in Somerset. She was the eighteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her daughter Elizabeth Seymour (born about 1406).

Family background

Margaret’s mother, Agnes Longland, was born at Axbridge, in Somerset, about 1370, and married John Farway before 20 January 1385. They had one son, John, and two daughters, Margaret and Joan.

Marriage and death

Margaret is said to have married Thomas Seymour, the son of Sir Edmund Seymour by his first wife, Joan, the daughter and heiress of Andrew Basset of Tickenham. Their one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, was born about 1406. Margaret’s brother, John Farway, was living in September 1419 but died before 1421, and Margaret, or her daughter, became one of his co-heirs with Margaret’s younger sister, Joan, the wife of Walter Stawell. Margaret died before 1421 and Thomas before 1422. By then Elizabeth, about sixteen, was already the wife of Thomas Berkeley, who held her lands in her right.

Notes

Sources

Margaret’s parents, marriage, daughter and death are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, pp. 174–175, a compiled genealogy. For Margaret, Richardson cites the Gentleman’s Magazine, new series, vol. 3 (1835), pp. 588–594; the Benolte visitation of Somerset (printed 1885), p. 108; Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, vol. 16 (1920), pp. 281–285; and the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 23 (2004), p. 57.

The family pedigrees

A Furneaux family pedigree dated 1423/44 calls her “Margareta prima filia predicti Johannis [Fareway] et Agnetis” (Margaret, the first daughter of the said John Farway and Agnes), married to John Seymour, son and heir of Sir Edmund Seymour. The Furneaux pedigree in the Benolte visitation gives her as “Margerett [Fareway], ux. John, sonn and heire of Sr. Henery Semore.” Richardson names her husband “Thomas (or John, Edmund) Seymour.”

The co-heirship

Richardson gives the co-heir to John Farway as “his wife, Margaret, or their daughter, Elizabeth,” in the period 1419 to 1421; which of the two inherited depends on whether Margaret was still living when her brother died.