♂Norman Washbourne

Norman Washbourne (died by 1479) was a Worcestershire esquire of Wichenford who spent years at law with his Salwey cousins over two family manors, a quarrel in which George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of King Edward IV, made an award. He was the fourteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Washbourne (died 1517) and, probably, John’s son John Washburn (died 1547).

Stanford and Wichenford

Norman was the son and heir of John Washbourne, lord of Knight’s Washbourne, by his second wife, Margaret Poher, a daughter and co-heir of John Poher of Wichenford. His father’s first marriage, to Joan Musard, had left one daughter, Isolde, and when she married John Salwey the family’s manor of Stanford, on the River Teme, passed with her to the Salweys, who held it by 1402. On 16 July 1427 his father granted Norman, as his son and heir, the old family manor of Knight’s Washbourne, to pass to the heirs male of his body.

In the words of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, writing about 1640, Norman, “losynge thus a share of hys inheritance, and incombred with suytes of lawe against hys cosyns in Salwey, retyred hym sealfe to the habitation of his maternall lyne in Wichenford, wheare they remayned six discentes in good reputation”.

The Salwey quarrel

For years Norman and Humfrey Salwey of Stanford, the son of John Salwey, were at law with each other. Humfrey claimed Knight’s Washbourne and Norman claimed Stanford, each as entailed^W upon himself, and each had writs pending against the other. George, Duke of Clarence^W, made an award between them, but for causes the record leaves unstated it was never carried out, and the duke died in 1478.

Norman was dead by 2 October 1479, when his son John and Humfrey, “by the mediacion of their frendes”, sealed an indenture to carry out the late duke’s award. Stanford stayed with the Salweys, and Knight’s Washbourne came to John, subject to a payment.

Marriage and children

Norman married Elizabeth Knivton, a daughter of Henry Knivton of Bradley, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. Their son and heir was John Washbourne, who died in 1517. Norman also had daughters: Eleanor married first Sir Richard Scrope, a younger son of Henry, fourth Lord Scrope of Bolton, and then Sir John Wyndham of Crownthorpe in Norfolk, and others married into the Gower, Vampage and Hugford families. Elizabeth probably died on 13 May 1454. Her name was carved on the alabaster tomb of Norman’s parents in the chancel at Wichenford church.

Notes

Sources

Norman’s life rests on James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), which prints in full his father’s charter of 16 July 1427 (Harleian MS 6139), granting him Knight’s Washbourne as son and heir, and the indentures of 1479 that settled the Salwey quarrel, which speak of him as already dead (“Which Norman is decessed”). Habington’s account of the family, written about 1640, is quoted from Davenport, who adds from the College of Arms pedigree that Norman made a deed of confirmation in the eleventh year of Henry VI (1432–33).

His office

Davenport, citing Nash’s history of Worcestershire, makes Norman vice-comes of the county in the seventeenth year of Henry VI (1438–39). The word is the usual Latin for sheriff, but the shrievalty of Worcestershire was then hereditary in the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, whose deputies did the work, so which office Norman held is not clear.

His death

The 1479 indentures show only that Norman was dead by then. Davenport thought the death on 13 May 1454 recorded on the family tomb at Wichenford was more likely Elizabeth’s than Norman’s.

His children

The College of Arms pedigrees give Norman only one son, John. Eleanor’s two marriages are from Burke’s Landed Gentry (1906), which Davenport quotes, and the Complete Peerage, which calls her “da. of Norman Washbourne, of co. Worcester”; Burke has her die in 1505. The other daughters come from the pedigrees of the families they married into, in the Visitation of Worcestershire of 1569 and the Visitation of Gloucestershire of 1623, as Davenport gathers them: Anne, wife of Thomas Gower; a daughter married to a Vampage; and a daughter married to John Hugford of Dixton. A fourth, Elizabeth, wife of Nicholas Folyot, is given as a daughter of “Will’s or Norman Washborne, quere”, and is left out here. Phillimore’s edition of the 1569 visitation also names a younger son, Thomas, whose daughter Elizabeth married John Pakington, but Davenport warned that “very great caution must be exercised” before accepting him as Norman’s son. None of these names the daughters’ mother.

His grandson John of Bengeworth

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of Norman’s son John Washbourne of Wichenford 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 Norman is therefore given here as probable below his son John.