♂Sir Thomas Bessiles

Thomas Bessiles (born before 1309, died 9 September 1378) was an English knight who held the manors of Buckland in Berkshire, Radcot in Oxfordshire and Kings Brompton in Somerset. He served as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, sat four times in parliament for Berkshire, and in 1360 was pardoned for the death of a man named William Westerne. He was the seventeenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son Peter Bessiles (1363–1425).

Early life

Thomas was the son of Geoffrey Bessiles and his wife Agnes. In 1323 his father had leave to settle the manor of Radcot on himself for life, with the remainder to Thomas and to Beatrice, daughter of Percival Simeon, and the heirs of their bodies; the same year Kings Brompton was granted to Percival, Thomas and Beatrice for Geoffrey’s lifetime. Beatrice was probably Thomas’s first wife, and no children of theirs are on record. Geoffrey died in 1339, and Thomas, “aged 26 and more”, was his heir. When his mother died on 16 July 1349 he inherited her share of Kings Brompton as well.

Knight and sheriff

By 1348 Thomas was a knight, and that year the king granted him a weekly market on Thursdays and two yearly fairs at Kings Brompton, with free warren^W over the demesne lands of the manor. In 1353 he had licence to give the advowson^W of Buckland church to William de Edyndon^W, Bishop of Winchester, for the chantry the bishop had founded at Edington. In 1355 the king committed to him the counties of Oxford and Berkshire and the castle of Oxford, to answer at the Exchequer as sheriff and keeper, and named him and John de Noers escheators^W for the two counties. He sat for Berkshire in the parliaments of 1357, 1358, 1360 and 1368.

In 1360 Thomas received the king’s pardon for the death of William Westerne. The pardon names him as being “in company of William de Bohun, late Earl of Northampton”^W. The records do not say how William Westerne died.

Marriage and family

Thomas and Katherine de Legh were married by 25 April 1359, when the chaplain Walter in le Hurne gave them the manor of Grafton, with a house at Clanfield and a rent from the mill and fishery at Radcot. Katherine was a daughter of John de Legh of Kingston in Warwickshire. In January 1360 Buckland was settled so that, after the life of Eleanor, widow of John Giffard of Bures, it would come to Thomas and Katherine for their lives and then to their son John; in 1366 Thomas settled it again on himself, Katherine and the heirs of their bodies. They had two sons, John and Peter, the younger born on 24 June 1363.

Two years before he died, Thomas sold the marriage of his son John to Peter de Bratton, and John was married to Bratton’s daughter Thomasine a year and a day before his father’s death.

Death

Thomas died on 9 September 1378, the day after the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. The inquests^W taken after his death found that his son and heir John was sixteen, and a third of Radcot was assigned to Katherine as her dower. At the Somerset inquest, held at Dunster in 1379, Peter de Bratton headed the jury. John died before he came of age, and his own young son John died on 28 November 1382, so in 1384 Thomas’s lands passed to his younger son Peter, once Peter had proved his age.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son Peter Bessiles, Peter’s son Thomas Bessiles, Thomas’s son William Bessiles (1444–1515), William’s daughter Elizabeth Bessiles, her daughter Anne Fettiplace, Anne’s daughter Mary Purefoy, Mary’s daughter Susanna Thorne, Susanna’s son Thomas Dudley^W (1576–1653), later governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Thomas’s son Samuel Dudley (1608–1683). One comes down through Samuel’s son Stephen Dudley (1654–1735) to Nathaniel Dudley (1763–1844), and the other to Nathaniel’s wife, Anna Smith (1764–1825); the two lines meet again in their daughter Sarah Dudley (1795–1839).

Notes

Sources for his life

Everything here comes from J. Renton Dunlop’s “The Besils Family of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Somerset” in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Notes 18–24, which abstracts the Patent, Charter, Close and Fine Rolls and the inquisitions post mortem: his father’s inquisition of 1339 (Edward III, file 59/18), his mother’s of 1349 (file 94/36), his own of 1378–79 (Richard II, files 4 and 8), and those on his grandson John in 1384. His death and his age at his parents’ deaths are also in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, volumes 8, 9 and 15. The name is also written Besiles, Besilles, Besyles and Besyls.

His age

His father’s inquisition of 1339 gives him as “aged 26 and more”, which would place his birth before about 1313; his mother’s of 1349 gives “aged 40 and more”, which would place it before 1309. Ages in these inquests were often round estimates.

His death date

The Berkshire inquest at Faringdon gives his death as “the Thursday after the Nat. of the B. V. M. last past” and the Oxfordshire inquest at Radcot as “the Morrow of the Nat.”; both mean 9 September 1378. The Somerset inquest at Dunster in August 1379 gives instead 15 August in the second year of Richard II (1378), and his son John as nineteen rather than sixteen. This page follows 9 September.

Beatrice Simeon

The 1323 licence leaves Radcot after Geoffrey’s life “to Thomas, son of Geoffrey and Beatrice, daughter of Percival Symeon”, and the 1339 inquest gives the same remainder to them “and the heirs of their bodies”, which reads as a settlement on a young married couple. Some online trees make Beatrice Thomas’s mother instead, but his mother’s inquest of 1349 calls him “son of the said Geoffrey and Agnes”. Percival Simeon was a King’s Serjeant.