♂Matthias Bessiles

Matthias Bessiles (died before 29 November 1268) was a knight in the service of Henry III who became marshal of the household of the queen, Eleanor of Provence^W, and later constable of Gloucester Castle^W and sheriff of Gloucestershire. When the barons sent a man of their own to take the county from him in the early 1260s, Matthias arrested him as an invader of the king’s right and kept him in prison. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through the younger Matthias Bessiles (died 1295).

In the king’s service

Matthias first appears in 1233, when the king granted him lands in Baston and Sutherton that had belonged to the fallen justiciar Hubert de Burgh^W, “to maintain himself in our service”, together with the wardship and marriage of the young daughter and heir of Reginald Basset. In 1234 he was serving the king in Gascony, and the king gave him by charter the manor of Westhal. More grants followed: in 1237 the manor of Alfinton in Devon, a Norman holding that had fallen to the Crown, to keep until the king chose to restore it to its rightful heirs, and in 1240 the whole manor of Shorestan in Wiltshire, with the right to present to its church. Not every claim went his way. In 1245 a jury found that Roger de Lokinton had common of pasture in the Shorestan meadow called la More, and that Matthias could not hold it free of Roger’s rights.

The queen’s marshal

In 1240 the king appointed Matthias marshal in the queen’s household. A family tradition recorded in the 1500s by the antiquary John Leland^W held that the Besils “cam out of Province in Fraunce”, the queen’s own homeland. His service to her was valued: in 1243 the king pressed the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Carlisle to find a church living for his brother Luke, in consideration of Matthias’s service to the queen. The same year the king sent him to meet Theobald, King of Navarre^W, and conduct him through the king’s lands towards Navarre. In 1254 he went with the queen to join the king in Gascony, and in 1260 the king’s council granted him the marriage of the son and heir of Hugh de Vivona, to be married to Matthias’s daughter.

Gloucestershire

By 1251 Sir Matthias was constable of Gloucester Castle, and he was sheriff of Gloucestershire in 1256, 1261 and 1262. He held the manor of Dudmerton in the county, and in 1261 a jury settled a boundary question between him and the Abbot of Pershore over two pieces of land there. In these years contentions had arisen between the king and some of his barons, the quarrel that led to the Second Barons’ War^W. Without the king’s assent the barons gave counties to keepers of their own choosing, and William de Tracy came to Gloucestershire on their behalf to put Matthias out of the shrievalty. Matthias seized him “as a transgressor of the king’s mandates” and held him in prison until the king should send further orders.

Marriage and family

Matthias married Beatrice, the widow of John de Basingeham, a tenant-in-chief^W of the king. The king released her from her oath not to marry without his licence “if she will receive Matthew de Bezill as a husband”, and by 1250 they held her dower lands at Wahull in Bedfordshire together, with the right to take wood from Saer de Wahull’s wood there. Their eldest son, John, was born about February 1246. A younger son, Matthias, who married the heiress Elizabeth de Averenges, was probably theirs as well. In 1264 Beatrice had the king’s safe conduct to come to England in the company of Mary, wife of Robert de Ferrers, Earl of Derby^W.

Death

Matthias died before 29 November 1268, the date of the writ for his inquest^W. The juries found that he held the manor of Alfintune in Devon of the king in chief, and the manor of Woedhull in Wiltshire by a yearly rent of four barbed arrows paid at the king’s exchequer. He also had the keeping of the manors of Wdebiri and Lewenestune until the heir of Sir Geoffrey de Alba Mara came of age. His heir was John, “his eldest son, aged 23 at the Feast of St. Peter in Cathedra next”. Beatrice died before 1276.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through the younger Matthias and his son Geoffrey Bessiles (1276–1339) down to Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. They part among the Dudleys and meet again in Sarah Dudley (1795–1839), whose parents Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844) and Anna Smith (1764–1825) both descend from Matthias.

Notes

Sources for his life

His life 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 1, 2 and 4, which abstract the Charter, Close and Patent Rolls, the Chancery miscellaneous inquisitions and his inquisition post mortem (Henry III, file 37/11). The same inquest is in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, volume 1, no. 718. The records write him as Matthias, Matthew and Macy, and the surname as Bezill, Besill, Besilles, Bessilles, Bezyl and Bysil.

Leland’s account of the family is in his Itinerary, vol. 5, pp. 72–73, written nearly three centuries after Matthias’s death; it does not name him.

Dates in the abstracts

Dunlop dates the licence for Beatrice’s marriage 1246 but cites the Patent Rolls of 27 Henry III, a regnal year that ran from October 1242 to October 1243; a marriage about 1243 fits the birth of their son John about February 1246. Dunlop likewise dates Matthias’s appointment as constable of Gloucester Castle 1256 while citing 38 Henry III (1253–54), and he is already called constable in 1251. The arrest of William de Tracy is dated 1262 and cited from the rolls of 46–47 Henry III, which cover 1261–63.

His sons

The inquest of 1268 names John as his eldest son and heir. No record names the younger Matthias (died 1295) as his son. Dunlop’s editorial note calls him “a younger son of Matthew de Besilles and his wife Beatrice”, married “by family arrangement” to Elizabeth de Averenges, whose wardship and marriage were held in 1259, by a sale from the king, by two king’s yeomen, William de Renham and Emery Bezill, the second of the same surname. The daughter mentioned in the grant of 1260 is not named.

His family

No record names his parents. The mandate of 1243 for his brother Luke is the only record that names a sibling.