♂Richard Lygon

Richard Lygon (about 1491 – 20 March 1556) was an English knight and landowner of Madresfield, in Worcestershire, who served as sheriff of both Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. He was the fourteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Henry Ligon (died 1577).

Early life and inheritance

Richard was born about 1491, the son and heir of Richard Lygon of Madresfield and his wife, Anne Beauchamp, the second daughter and a co-heiress of Richard Beauchamp, 2nd Lord Beauchamp of Powick^W. His parents had eight sons. His father died at Madresfield on 1 May 1512, when Richard was twenty-one, and Richard succeeded to the family lands: Madresfield and Lower Mitton in Worcestershire, and Giffardes (in Broadwell), Matson and Kemerton in Gloucestershire. Kemerton had come to the Lygons as part of his mother’s share of her father’s estates.

Douglas Richardson’s Magna Carta Ancestry traces his mother’s line back to Henry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford^W, one of the barons who stood surety for Magna Carta, and the same author’s Plantagenet Ancestry calls Richard a descendant of King Edward I.

Marriage and family

Before 1511 Richard married Margery Greville, a daughter and co-heiress of Sir William Greville of Arle Court, in Cheltenham, a justice of the Court of Common Pleas^W. Through her, Richard also came to hold Arle Court and Staverton, in Gloucestershire. The couple had four sons, William, Ferdinand, John and Henry, and six daughters, Ursula, Elizabeth, Mary, Anne, Susanna and Barbara. Henry, the fourth son, made his home at Upton St Leonards, in Gloucestershire.

Margery died in 1542. Richard then married a second wife, Joan, whose surname is not recorded; they had no children.

Knighthood and service

Richard is said to have been knighted at the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn^W, the second wife of Henry VIII. In 1544 he served in the king’s war in France^W. Sir Richard died on 20 March 1556, and his widow, Joan, survived him.

The family

William Ligon, the son and heir, was born about 1512 and was married under a contract of 1529 to Eleanor Dennis, a daughter of Sir William Dennis of Dyrham, in Gloucestershire. In 1538 he was among the gentlemen listed by Lord Cromwell^W as “meet to be preferred in the King’s service”, and in 1544 he, like his father, was serving in the army in France. He inherited Madresfield and his mother’s lands at Arle Court, Elmstone and Staverton, served as sheriff of Worcestershire, and died at Madresfield on 29 September 1567; he was buried at Austin Friars^W, in London.

Notes

Sources

Richard’s birth, parents, inheritance, marriages, children, knighthood, war service and death are from Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 510 (with his son Henry at p. 264), and from the same author’s Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edition (2011), vol. 1, p. 634. Richardson cites Nash’s Collections for the History of Worcestershire (1782), Foss’s Judges of England (1857), the heralds’ visitation^W of Worcestershire of 1569, the Victoria County History of Worcestershire and of Gloucestershire, the Madresfield muniments of the Lygon family (1929), and the William and Mary Quarterly, 2nd series, vol. 16 (1936). The account of William Ligon is from Magna Carta Ancestry, pp. 510–511.

Dates

Richardson’s birth year of about 1491 is worked out from Richard’s age, given as twenty-one in 1512; it is not a baptism. Richardson gives no place of death. The Genealogical Dictionary of Maine and New Hampshire notes in passing that the estate of Sir Richard Lygon was administered in 1556, which agrees with the year of his death. Richardson gives the date of William Ligon’s death as 29 September 1567; Burke’s Peerage (1869) gives 8 September 1567.

The knighthood

Richardson writes that Richard was knighted “in 1535 at the Coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn”. The coronation of Anne Boleyn took place on 1 June 1533, so either the year or the occasion is wrong in the account.

Margery’s name

The 1569 Visitation of Worcestershire, as Richardson quotes it, records the marriage as “S’ Richard Lygon K. = Margart da. & coeheire to Wm Grevell Judg.” Richardson calls her Margery in the entry itself and Margaret in the list of her children, and Burke’s Peerage (1869) calls her Margaret, “dau and heir of Mr Justice Greville, of the court of Common Pleas”.