♂Roger Washbourne

Roger Washbourne was a Worcestershire knight of the thirteenth century, the earliest known member of the knightly family that took its name from Washbourne, a township in the parish of Overbury. He was the twentieth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his son John Washbourne (died 1319).

Records of his life

Little is known of Sir Roger beyond that he flourished in the latter half of the century. In 1259 he was named in an inquisition concerning William de Stutevill, and in the subsidy roll^W of 1280 he was assessed as of Little Comberton and of Washbourne, and also of Stanford, on the far side of Worcestershire some twenty-five miles away. He seems to have been still living in 1298–99, when a register of the bishopric of Worcester calls his son “Johannes de Dufford filius Rogeri de Washborn”.

Earlier men appear at Washbourne, among them William, son of Sampson, who held three hides there in the reign of Henry II, but the antiquary Thomas Habington^W, writing about 1640, did not know how to join them to the family, and the College of Arms^W pedigrees of the Washbournes begin with Sir Roger. Habington counted “Sir Roger, Sir John, and Sir Roger Washborn, all Knightes before the raygne of Edward the thyrd”, and judged from their arms that they were descended from the “honorable houses of Zouche and Corbett”.

Lines of descent

The line from Roger runs through his son John and down the Washbourne family of Wichenford to John Washburn of Bengeworth (died 1547), who is probably John’s fifth great-grandson.

Notes

Sources

Roger is known from James Davenport’s The Washbourne Family of Little Washbourne and Wichenford (1907), pp. 1–3, where he is Sir Roger (1), the head of the pedigree and the grandfather of Sir Roger (3). Davenport draws on Habington’s notes on Worcestershire, which call the township of Knight’s Washbourne “the seate of Washborn’s knightly family”, and on the two College of Arms pedigrees, which begin with him. Phillimore gives 23 Henry III (1238–39) as Roger’s date. Davenport’s summary calls him “the first authentic Washbourne” and has him “living as late as 1299”, from the register of 27 Edward I in which his son appears as John de Dufford.

A wife named Joan

Davenport writes that the family’s connection with Stanford “possibly” came through “Sir Roger’s wife, Joan”. No record names her.

The descent below

That John Washburn of Bengeworth, who died in 1547, was the younger son of John Washbourne of Wichenford (died 1517) is Davenport’s identification, not a record’s, so the line from Roger to Nancy Jane Blanchard is probable below that generation.