♂Roger Washbourne

Roger Washbourne was a fourteenth-century Worcestershire knight, lord of the manor of Washbourne, the township in the parish of Overbury from which his family took its name. He was the eighteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his younger son John Washbourne.

Washbourne and Stanford

Roger was the son and heir of Sir John Washbourne, probably by his wife, Isabella. By about 1316 he had married Margaret, and his father confirmed to “Roger his son and heire and Margaret his wife” all his manor of Washbourne. Sir John was dead before Michaelmas 1319, and that year Roger was at law in the Court of Common Pleas^W with John Cassy, a minor suing through his guardians, over premises at Droitwich that Isabella claimed as her dower.

Roger and his mother were assessed together under Washbourne and Stanford in the subsidy roll^W of 1327, and again under Stanford in that of 1332–33. In 1340 he joined in the declaration made about the church of Overbury. The patronage of the church at Stanford, which Isabella had exercised in 1316, came to Roger, and he appears to have presented three rectors there, two of them within seven weeks in 1349 and the third on 2 July 1353. When he died is not known.

His sons

By the account of the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, written about 1640, Sir Roger had two sons, both christened John. The younger John married Isabelle and was the father of Peter Washbourne, and it was Peter’s son John who in time became the heir of his great-uncle, the elder John, and so lord of Washbourne and Stanford. The line probably runs on from Peter’s son John to John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, a younger son of John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517).

The family

The elder of Sir Roger’s two sons named John married Katherine Thromwin and died without children.

Notes

Sources

Roger is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), pp. 4–8, which follows the two College of Arms pedigrees of the family, the accounts of Thomas Habington and Nash’s history of Worcestershire. Davenport numbers him Sir Roger (3), the grandson of an earlier Sir Roger (1). His father’s confirmation of the manor, in the ninth year of Edward II (1315–16), is from a College of Arms pedigree; the Droitwich case is from a De Banco roll of 13 Edward II (1319), m. 18, in which Isabella is “the late wife of Sir John”; Davenport writes “dowry” for her claim. Habington names “Sir Roger, Sir John, and Sir Roger Washborn, all Knightes before the raygne of Edward the thyrd”. The 1340 declaration was made for the Nonarum Inquisitiones.

His parents

That Roger was Sir John’s son and heir rests on the College of Arms pedigree and the De Banco roll, which names “Roger son of Sir John de Wasseburn”. That Isabella was his mother is Davenport’s inference from the subsidy rolls, where she appears beside “Roger, doubtless her son”.

Stanford church

Davenport’s table of patrons, from Nash, gives “Rogerus de Wasseborne” as patron for three incumbents: Thomas de Wasseborne, an acolyte, on 30 May 1349, Johannes Arches on 16 July 1349 and William de Edynghull on 2 July 1353. Davenport writes that Nash “seems to imply” that Roger presented all three times. In the subsidy rolls of 1346 and 1358 a Roger de Washborne is given under Stanford Washborne and Washborne, “paying in respect of land formerly held by John”.

Robert

Weaver’s Visitation of Herefordshire (1569) and one of the two College of Arms pedigrees call him Robert, which Davenport took to point to his identity with the Robert de Wassebourne of the 1327 roll, under Aldington and Bretforton.

A grant to “John his son”

The College of Arms pedigree records that “Roger Washborne Lord of Washborne, knight, did confirm to John his son” in the ninth year of Edward III (1335–36). Which of the two Johns is meant is not said, nor which of the sons was Margaret’s.

The descent below Peter’s great-grandson John

That the John named in the heralds’ pedigrees as a younger son of John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517) is John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s; the 1517 will does not name him. The descent from Roger is therefore given here as probable below that generation.