♂Peter Washbourne

Peter Washbourne was a fourteenth-century member of the Worcestershire family that took its name from Little Washbourne, in the parish of Overbury. He was the sixteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Washbourne.

Peter was probably the son of John Washbourne and his wife, Isabelle. His father was the younger of the two sons of Sir Roger Washbourne, both christened John, and the elder John died without children.

Marriage and children

In 1355 Peter married Isolde Hanley, of Hanley William, in the parish of Eastham, Worcestershire. The family’s lands at Eastham probably came to the Washbournes through Isolde, and they were still in the family’s hands when her great-grandson John Washbourne of Wichenford died in 1517. Peter and Isolde had two sons: John, their heir, and William, of whom nothing more is recorded. Their son John became the heir of Peter’s uncle, the elder John, and so lord of Washbourne and Stanford.

Lines of descent

The line from Peter to Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) runs through his son John Washbourne, then through John’s son Norman Washbourne, and then through Norman’s son John Washbourne of Wichenford, who died in 1517. The line continues, probably, to John Washburn (died 1547).

Notes

Sources

Peter is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), p. 8, which follows the two College of Arms pedigrees of the family and the accounts of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, written about 1640. Of Peter’s father Davenport writes that “little is forthcoming”: he was the younger son of Sir Roger, his wife’s name was Isabelle, and his elder brother, also called John, died without issue. Habington gives the descent in one line, naming Peter’s son as “John Washborn, the sonne of Peter de Washborn, the sonne of John Washborn, the youngest sonne of Sir Roger de Washborn”, and makes that John the heir of the elder John, “his nephew’s sonne”. The marriage is dated to the twenty-ninth year of Edward III, which ran from January 1355 to January 1356.

Isolde’s father

Both College of Arms pedigrees name Isolde’s father Thomas Hanley; Habington, Nash and Phillimore all give him as John Hanley. Neither name is given here as fact.

The Eastham lands

That the Eastham property came to the Washbournes with Isolde is Davenport’s judgment (“probably”), made from the lands named in the 1517 inquisition after the death of John Washbourne of Wichenford (p. 34) and repeated for a later generation (p. 69).

The descent below Norman’s son John

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517) is John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s; the 1517 will does not name him. The descent from Peter is therefore given here as probable below that generation.