♂Roger de Tony

Roger de Tony (died 1264) was an English baron, lord of Painscastle in Radnorshire and Baron of Flamstead in Hertfordshire, with manors spread from Cornwall to Cambridgeshire, who stood with King Henry III against the barons in the last years of his life. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son Ralph de Tony (died 1295).

Marriage

Roger was the eldest surviving son and heir of Sir Ralph de Tony and of Parnel, a daughter of Walter de Lacy, and he is said to have been born about 29 September 1235. On 30 June 1239 an agreement was made for his marriage to Alice de Bohun, a daughter of Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and of Maud of Eu, so that the bridegroom was not yet four years old when his marriage was settled. In great landed families a marriage was often arranged while the couple were still children, as a bond between two estates. Alice brought as her maritagium^W, the land a bride’s family gave with her, the manors of Newton Toney and East Coulston in Wiltshire.

Roger and Alice had a son, Ralph, and a daughter, Alice. Alice was living in 1255, and she was buried in the chapter house of Llanthony Abbey, near Gloucester. After 1255 Roger married again, to a woman named Isabel.

Service to the king

Roger’s lands lay at Painscastle on the Welsh border, at Kirtling, Brinkley, Long Stanton and Whittlesford in Cambridgeshire, at Walthamstow in Essex, Garsington in Oxfordshire, Stratford Tony in Wiltshire, Elmley Lovett in Worcestershire and Carnanton in Cornwall, among others. In 1256 he had a license to hunt the hare, the fox, the cat and the badger with his own dogs in the counties of Southampton, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire.

In 1262 he crossed the sea with the queen, and in February 1262/3 he was summoned to Hereford to act against Llywelyn ap Gruffudd^W, the prince of Wales. When the barons rose against the king in the Second Barons’ War^W, Roger held to Henry III. In January 1264 the king ordered an assize of novel disseisin^W, a suit to recover land taken from its holder, in a case brought against Roger by Ralph de Arundell. Roger died shortly before 12 May 1264. On that day the marriage of his son, Ralph, then about nine, was granted to the boy’s grandfather, Humphrey de Bohun, and the custody of his lands to Edmund, the king’s son. Roger’s widow, Isabel, was still living in February 1264/5.

The family

Their daughter, Alice, married Walter de Beauchamp of Alcester in Warwickshire, later steward of the household of King Edward I, by a settlement made in or about 1269, and her maritagium included East Coulston, the Wiltshire manor that had come to the Tonys with her mother. In 1289 Alice and Walter received a dispensation^W to remain married, because they were related in the fourth degree of kindred, and in 1293 they exchanged their land at East Coulston with her brother Ralph for the manor of Cressingham in Norfolk. They had at least five sons and four daughters.

Lines of descent

Roger reaches Nancy Jane Blanchard through his son Ralph de Tony. A second route probably runs through Ralph’s descendant John Washburn (died 1547); the Notes give the reason that link is only probable.

Notes

Sources

Roger’s parentage, his birth, his marriage agreement of 30 June 1239, Alice’s maritagium, their two children, his second marriage, his lands, the hunting license, his service and his death are given by Douglas Richardson in Magna Carta Ancestry (2005), p. 824 (Tony 3), which cites, among others, the Complete Peerage (vol. 12, part 1, pp. 771–772, under Tony). The grants of 12 May 1264 are from the next entry, p. 825 (Tony 4), and their daughter’s marriage and its settlement, the dispensation and the exchange of 1293 from p. 674 (Powick 4). The suit of January 1264 is a writ to take an assize of novel disseisin, dated 27 January 1264, with Ralph de Arundell as plaintiff and “Roger de Thony” as defendant, in the Arundell of Lanherne and Trerice papers at the Cornwall Record Office (AR/3/144), as Richardson cites it.

His age at the marriage

Richardson gives his birth as about 29 September 1235, and the age follows from that date and the date of the agreement. He also cites a grant to Queen Eleanor of the custody of the lands that had been Ralph de Tony’s, but not of the marriage of his heir (Calendar of Close Rolls 1237–1242, p. 422).

Alice’s burial

Richardson cites a Bohun pedigree among the records of Llanthony Abbey, printed in Dugdale’s Monasticon Anglicanum (vol. 6, part 1, 1830, pp. 134–136): “Alia, vocata Alicia, nupta fuit domino de Thonye, et que Alicia jacet in capitulo predicto”, another daughter, called Alice, was married to the lord of Tony, and that Alice lies in the aforesaid chapter house.

A son Geoffrey

Richardson also gives Roger a son, Geoffrey, “by an uncertain wife”.

The descent through John Washburn

That the John whom the pedigrees give as a son of Joyce Botetourt’s great-granddaughter Joan Mitton was John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is the identification of the Washbournes’ historian, James Davenport, not a record’s, so the descent through him is given here as probable.