♀Margaret Poher

Margaret Poher was a daughter and co-heir of John Poher of Wichenford, in Worcestershire, and the second wife of John Washbourne, lord of Knight’s Washbourne; through her the Washbournes came to Wichenford, which remained their home until about the time of the Restoration. She was the fifteenth great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Norman Washbourne and, probably, Norman’s grandson John Washburn (died 1547).

The Pohers of Wichenford

The Pohers were an old Worcestershire family, said to have come to England with William the Conqueror. A Hugh le Poher was deputy sheriff of the county under Henry II, and in the reigns of Edward III and Richard II a John le Poher held half of the manor of Wichenford, which had come down to him from the Chamberlains. The family held lands across the county and were large benefactors to the Priory of Worcester, to which they gave the manor of Batenhall. Margaret’s father, John Poher, commonly called Powre, was lord of Wichenford.

Marriage

After the death of his first wife, Joan Musard, John married Margaret Poher, a daughter and co-heir of John Poher of Wichenford, and through her, about 1400, the Washbournes came to Wichenford. By Margaret, John had three children: Norman, his heir, John and Elynor.

John’s only daughter by his first marriage, Isolde, had taken the family’s manor of Stanford, on the River Teme, to the Salweys when she married John Salwey. Norman, “losynge thus a share of hys inheritance”, in the words of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, made his home at Wichenford, “the habitation of his maternall lyne”.

Death and burial

When Margaret died is not known. She and John were buried in the chancel of Wichenford church, under an alabaster tomb on the north side that bore the figure of an armed man and, on his right hand, his wife, with a little dog at her feet. Its inscription named John Washbourne, esquire, and Margery, his wife, and Habington, copying it about 1640, wrote that the tomb, worn as it was, showed the marriage of Washbourne with “Poher’s coheyre, wheareby the name came first to Wichenford”. A huge alabaster slab that served as a seat in the arbor of Wichenford vicarage until 1892, and was afterwards built into the north wall of the church’s sanctuary as a credence table^W, may be what is left of it.

Notes

Sources

Margaret is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), which quotes two accounts of the family written by Thomas Habington about 1640: in one she is “Margery, daughter and coheyre of John Poher, commonly called Powre of Wicheneford”, in the other “Margaret, daughter and coheyre of John Poher, Lord of Wichenford”. Davenport also prints the Poher pedigree from the College of Arms pedigree of the Washbournes and from Phillimore’s edition of Habington’s pedigrees; both make her the daughter of John Poher, the son of Roger le Poher. The account of the Pohers and their lands is Grazebrook’s, quoting Nash’s history of Worcestershire, which is also the source of the story that the family came over with the Conqueror.

Her name

Habington gives her both as Margery and as Margaret, and the tomb, as he copied it, as Margery. The surname is written Poher, le Poher, Power and Powre.

Her sister

Phillimore’s pedigree also gives her a sister, Agnes, the wife of James de Habington, so that, as Davenport noted, the two great families of Wichenford, the Habingtons and the Washbournes, both married into the Pohers, apparently at about the same time. The College of Arms pedigree calls Margaret simply daughter and heir.

Her marriage

Davenport dates the Washbournes’ arrival at Wichenford, “roughly speaking”, about 1400. A date of 1397 for the marriage, given without authority in Mrs. J. C. Washburn’s Notes of Washburn Genealogy, he thought “no doubt approximately correct”.

The date on the tomb

The inscription ended with a death on 13 May 1454. Habington took it for John’s; Davenport thought it more likely to be that of Elizabeth, the wife of Norman. Nothing on the tomb gives the date of Margaret’s own death.

Her great-grandson John of Bengeworth

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of Norman’s son John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517) is John Washburn of Bengeworth, beside Evesham, who died in 1547, is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s; the 1517 will of John of Wichenford does not name him. In 1914 Barnard judged the identification “a reasonable probability” but “by no means a certainty”. The descent from Margaret is therefore given here as probable below Norman’s son John.