♂Richard Lygon

Richard Lygon (died 1 May 1512) was an English landowner of Madresfield, in Worcestershire, and the husband of Anne Beauchamp, a daughter and co-heiress of the last Lord Beauchamp of Powick. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Richard Lygon (about 1491–1556).

Family and marriage

Richard was born between 1467 and 1477, the son of Thomas Lygon of Great Malvern and Madresfield, who is said to have sat for Worcestershire as a knight of the shire^W, and his wife, Anne Giffard, the daughter and heiress of Nicholas Giffard of Matson and Cromhall Lygon, in Gloucestershire. Richard held Madresfield and Little Mitton, in Worcestershire, and Matson and Giffardes (in Broadwell), in Gloucestershire.

Richard and Anne probably married about 1490. Anne was the second of the three daughters of Richard Beauchamp, 2nd Lord Beauchamp of Powick^W, and his wife, Elizabeth Stafford. Her father died at Broomhill, in Kent, on 19 January 1502/3 without a surviving son, and his barony died with him. Anne’s portion of her father’s estates included the manors of Down Hatherley and Kemerton, in Gloucestershire, and Acton Beauchamp, in Worcestershire. The couple had eight sons, Richard, John, George, William, Roger, Michael, Thomas and Edward; George became a clergyman.

Death

Richard died at Madresfield on 1 May 1512, when their son and heir, Richard, was twenty-one. Anne outlived her husband by twenty-two years and died on 22 July 1534, leaving a will.

Notes

Sources

Richard’s parents, birth, lands, marriage, children and death, and his wife’s family and inheritance, are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 510, with Anne’s father at p. 678. Richardson cites Nash’s Collections for the History of Worcestershire (1782), the heralds’ visitation^W of Worcestershire of 1569, the Complete Peerage, the Victoria County History of Worcestershire and of Gloucestershire, the Madresfield muniments of the Lygon family (1929), Wedgwood’s History of Parliament (1936) for Thomas Lygon, and the William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd series, vol. 16 (1936). The Complete Peerage, 2nd edition, vol. 2 (1912), p. 47, also names Richard Lygon as Anne’s husband and records that her father’s barony became extinct at his death. Richardson gives Thomas only as “Esq.” in his entry for Richard, so the knight-of-the-shire seat is a compiled-genealogy claim that rests on his citation of Wedgwood’s biography of Thomas.

Dates and places

Richardson puts Richard’s birth between 1467 and 1477, from his age, given as “30 and more” in 1507; it is not a baptism. The year of the marriage is Richardson’s own estimate: he writes that they married “probably about 1490”. Richardson marks George as a clerk, that is, a clergyman. He writes Little Mitton for Richard’s holding and Lower Mitton for his son’s.

Burke’s account

Burke’s Peerage (1869) makes Anne Beauchamp the wife of a Thomas Lygon, “grandson of Thomas Lygon, who acquired the estate of Madresfield with the heiress of Bracy”, and the mother of Sir Richard Lygon. Richardson, the Complete Peerage and the 1569 Visitation of Worcestershire, which records “Richard Lygon … = Anne da. & coeheire to Rich. Bewchamp of Powike”, all name her husband Richard.