♂Richard Ashe

Richard Ashe was a landowner of Tickenham, Burnham and Compton Bishop, in Somerset, England, whose mother brought Tickenham to the Ashes as the heiress of the Berkeleys of Tickenham. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Ashe (died 1540).

Family and lands

Richard was the one son of James Ashe and his wife, Cecily Berkeley. In 1479 Cecily was heiress to her brother, John Berkeley, of Tickenham, and James held Tickenham in her right. She later married a Bristol merchant, Robert Forthey, and died in 1514. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry, a study of colonial families descended from the medieval kings of England, traces Richard’s descent on his mother’s side back to King John, through a daughter born to the king outside his marriage.

On 18 June 1503 Richard was a party to a fine^W in Herefordshire, a conveyance of land made in the form of a lawsuit settled in the king’s court, with William Rudhale and John Gode on one side and Richard Griffith and his wife, Isabel, on the other. Lands that Richard had granted later brought his son into court: between 1532 and 1538 Philip Cayme, a husbandman of Tickenham, sued John in Chancery^W over an action for contempt of an injunction, concerning lands granted by Richard.

Marriage and family

Richard married Margaret, whose surname is not known. They had a son and heir, John, and probably a second son, Hugh, a gentleman.

Richard died before Margaret. Their son John died on 19 August 1540, while his own son and heir was still under age, and Margaret died less than four weeks later, on 13 September 1540.

Notes

Sources

Richard’s parents, his mother’s inheritance, second marriage and death, his lands, marriage and children, the 1503 fine, the Chancery suit and Margaret’s death are from Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, pp. 173–176. For Richard himself Richardson cites the fine of 18 June 1503 (National Archives CP 25/1/83/58, no. 20), the Chancery suit (C 1/761/24) and the inquisition post mortem^W taken after his son John’s death (E 150/930/15). For his mother he cites Byrchmore’s Collections for a Parochial History of Tickenham (1895), the inquisition taken after her brother’s death in 1479 (C 140/70/40) and the one taken after her own, under the name Cecily Forthey (C 142/29/105). Richardson calls him Richard Ashe (or Asshe), and gives the name as Richard Asshe in his abstract of the fine.

Dates

Richardson gives no dates of birth or death for Richard. He was living on 18 June 1503, and he had died by 13 September 1540, when Margaret died his widow.

The royal descent

Richardson’s Ashe line begins with King John “by an unknown mistress,” whose daughter Isabel Fitz Roy married Sir Richard Fitz Ives of Cornwall, and comes down through Cornish and Somerset families to Cecily Berkeley.

His wife

Richardson names Richard’s wife only as Margaret and leaves her surname blank.

The children

Richardson gives the couple “two sons, John, Esq., and presumably Hugh, Gent.” He says no more of Hugh. The line to Nancy Jane Blanchard runs through John, his daughter Jane Ashe and her son Edward Bassett (1558–1602).