♂Sir Richard Harcourt

Richard Harcourt (died 1 October 1486) was an English knight of Witham in Berkshire (now Wytham, near Oxford), a sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire in the reign of Edward IV^W. He married more than once, and his son and heir, Christopher, married Joan Stapleton, the daughter of Richard’s last wife, Katharine, by her first husband. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Alice Harcourt (died 1526).

Family and service

Richard is said to have been a younger son of Sir Thomas Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt in Oxfordshire and his wife, Joan Fraunceys. His first wife was Edith Saint Clair, the daughter of Thomas St. Clair; she had been twelve years old when her father died in 1435. Edward IV is said to have granted Richard and Edith the manor of Shotswell in Warwickshire, in return for “the good services which Richard Harecourt, Esq., had performed unto Richard Duke of York, father to the King, and to himself”. Richard of York^W was the Yorkist claimant to the throne, so the grant places Richard among the men who had served the house of York.

Edith is said to have been the mother of Richard’s son and heir, Christopher, and of a daughter, Anne, who married Henry Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele^W; Alice, who married William Bessiles, was probably her daughter too. Richard also had a daughter Isabel and a son William.

By November 1465 Richard was a knight, and a privy seal warrant of the 14th of that month appointed him sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire^W for the coming year. In September 1472 his name turns up in the Paston Letters^W: John Paston wrote from Norwich to Sir John Paston that Sir John’s hope of being a knight of the shire^W was “an ipossoybyl to be browght a bowght”, because the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Suffolk had agreed more than a fortnight before to have Sir Robert Wingfield and Sir Richard Harcourt.

Alice’s marriage

Alice’s marriage drew Richard into a lawsuit. Her husband, William Bessiles, was the son of Thomas Bessiles, who before his death had placed the boy, his marriage included, in the keeping of William Warbelton and his wife, Margery. By Richard’s account they married William, then fourteen and with his consent, to Richard’s daughter. William’s mother, Clemence, and her husband, John Nowers, sued Richard in Chancery^W, claiming that Thomas’s will had given her the disposal of the boy’s marriage; how the suit ended is not known.

Second marriage

Sir Miles Stapleton of Ingham died on 1 October 1466, and Richard later married his widow, Katharine. Christopher married Joan, one of Katharine’s two daughters by Sir Miles, so that Richard’s son married Richard’s own stepdaughter. Christopher died before his father.

Death

“Richard Harecourte, of Witham in Berks” made his will on 25 September 1486. He asked to be buried “in the Church of oure Lady in the Abby of Abingdon”^W and asked prayers “for the soule of Edyth, sometyme my wif, and for the soule of Dame Katerine now my wife, when she shall depart out of this world”. He remembered “Alice, my daughter”, the wife of William Bessiles, and settled his lands on Katharine for her life and then on his son William, with Alice and Anne among the heirs who might one day take them. He died on 1 October 1486, and the will was proved on 25 October. The inquisition^W held after his death found that his heir was Christopher’s son, Miles Harcourt, aged eighteen and more.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Alice, Alice’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, Elizabeth’s daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for his life

His death on 1 October 1486 comes from the inquisition taken after it (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry VII, vol. 1, no. 163): “He died 1 Oct. last”, with the writ dated 9 October 1486 and the inquisition held on 12 June 1487; his heir was “Miles Harecourt, aged 18 and more, cousin and heir, son of Christopher his son and heir”. His will, registered in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (quire “Logge”, p. 204), with the indenture that follows it and its probate of 25 October in Henry VII’s second year, is quoted in E. W. Harcourt’s The Harcourt Papers, vol. 1 (1880), pp. 74–75. The same pages give the Shotswell grant, the warrant of “14 Nov: 5 E. 4” naming “Richard Harcourt, Kt.” sheriff of Oxford and Berks, and John Paston’s letter dated at Norwich on 21 September 1472. The Chancery suit is the bill of John Nowers and Clemence and Richard Harcourt’s answer (Early Chancery Proceedings, Bundle 28, No. 384), abstracted by J. Renton Dunlop in his account of the Besils family (Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5, 1923–25), which also gives the 1485 inquisition calling Alice the daughter of “Sir Richard Harcourt, knight, lately esquire”. His parents are those given in Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (2nd ed., 2011), p. 263, which calls him Richard Harcourt, Knt., of Witham, Berkshire; The Harcourt Papers makes him the second son.

His marriages and children

The Harcourt Papers gives him three wives: Edith, the daughter and heir of Thomas St. Clair; Eleanor, daughter of Sir Roger Lewknor, the mother of a son John; and Katharine, the widow of Sir Miles Stapleton, the mother of his only son William. The Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 7, under Ingham) calls Katharine his second wife and says she died on 13 or 14 October 1488. William is counted here among Edith’s children; The Harcourt Papers and the settlement of his lands on Katharine and then on William point rather to Katharine as William’s mother. The Harcourt Papers’ pedigree calls William Bessiles’s wife Isabel, but the will names a daughter Isabel and, separately, “Alice, my daughter, wiff to Wm. Bessillys”.

Christopher and Joan Stapleton

The Complete Peerage says that Edith “was mother of Christopher Harcourt, who m. his stepmother’s 2nd da.”, Joan, who married secondly Sir John Huddelstone of Millom, Cumberland. Richard’s indenture names “Jane, wife of John Hodeston, Esq., Sometime wife of Christopher Harcourt”, and the inquisition taken in 1489 after Katharine’s death names her daughters and heirs as Elizabeth, wife of Sir William Calthorpe, and Joan, wife of “William Hudulston”, aged 26 and more. The Harcourt Papers gives Christopher’s death as 1474.

His death year

The Harcourt Papers dates his death 1 October 1487. The inquisition, the Complete Peerage and the probate of his will in Henry VII’s second year (which ran from August 1486 to August 1487) all give 1486.