♂Thomas Bessiles

Thomas Bessiles (died 29 September 1458) was an English gentleman who held the manors of Carswell and Longworth in Berkshire. He was the son of Margery Hannys, the second wife of the knight Sir Peter Bessiles, yet neither he nor his son could inherit any of the family’s lands, and before he died he placed his son William, marriage and all, in the keeping of his own mother and her second husband. He was the fifteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son William Bessiles (1444–1515).

Life

Thomas was a son of Margery Hannys, who married Sir Peter Bessiles as his second wife; he was probably born outside marriage. Sir Peter’s will of 23 October 1424 asked that Thomas be kept at school. When Sir Peter died on 2 March 1425, his heir was a cousin, Robert Cramford, and Margery went on to marry William Warbelton. Sir Peter had put his manor of Kings Brompton in Somerset, with the patronage of Barlynch Priory^W, in the hands of feoffees^W to carry out his will. If the prior could get leave to hold the manor in mortmain^W within two years of Sir Peter’s death, it was to go to the priory; if not, Thomas was to have the chance to buy it, the money going to the prior for the good of Sir Peter’s soul. No licence came, and the feoffees made an estate of the manor to Thomas for an agreed sum, but one of them, Thomas Somerton, refused to join in, and Thomas sued him in the Court of Chancery^W.

Thomas married Clemence, and their son William was born about 1444; three more sons, Humfrey, George and Christopher, are named in a family settlement of 1461. Thomas held Carswell and Longworth, with rents in Abingdon, jointly with William and Margery Warbelton and John Hyde. They passed the lands to two feoffees, Richard de la Hay and John Lydyard, and John Lydyard in turn granted them to Thomas and Clemence and Thomas’s heirs. The Warbeltons provided for Thomas’s children for as long as he lived.

Death

Thomas died on 29 September 1458. The inquisition^W taken at Twyford on 31 October found that his son and heir William was fourteen and more, and that Clemence survived him. By Richard Harcourt’s account, Thomas, knowing that he and his son could hold land only at the Warbeltons’ pleasure, had given William into their rule “as well in his marriage as otherwise”, and with the boy’s consent they married him at fourteen to Alice, a daughter of Richard Harcourt. Clemence, who had married John Nowers of Tackley in Oxfordshire, later sued Richard Harcourt in Chancery, claiming that Thomas’s will gave her the disposal of her son’s marriage. Nearly sixty years later, when William made his will on 4 May 1515, he asked for prayers for the souls of “my ffather and moder Thomas and Clemens”.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son William, 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

Nearly everything here comes from J. Renton Dunlop’s account of the Besils family in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), which abstracts the records: Thomas’s own Chancery bill against Thomas Somerton (Early Chancery Proceedings, bundle 9, no. 127); the inquisition taken at Twyford, Berkshire, on 31 October 1458 (C 139/172), which gives his death “29 September last” and his son William “aged 14 and more”; Richard Harcourt’s answer to the bill of John Nowers and Clemence (Early Chancery Proceedings, bundle 28, no. 384); and the 1484 inquisition on Margery Warbelton’s death, which recites the settlement of 16 July 1461 naming “Humfrey, George and Christopher, sons of the said Thomas Besyles”. William’s own will (Prerogative Court of Canterbury, PROB 11/18) names his parents. The date of Sir Peter’s will comes from the History of Parliament volumes for 1386–1421. Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (pp. 263–264) calls Thomas “of Carswell (in Buckland)”. The name is also written Besyles, Besils, Bessells and Besilles.

His birth

Dunlop’s pedigree chart joins Thomas to Sir Peter Bessiles by the wavy line used for a child born outside marriage, and Thomas’s Chancery bill calls him “Thomas Besyles, son of Sir Piers Besyles, knight”. Richard Harcourt’s answer says that Thomas considered “neither he nor his said son were inheritable to any lands, but only at the pleasure of the said William Warbelton and Margery his wife”. Sir Peter’s heir in 1425 was his cousin Robert Cramford, as the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem spells him (vol. 22, no. 447); Dunlop’s abstract prints Cranford. Dunlop’s abstract of Sir Peter’s will speaks of “Thomas, son of Margery”, who “is to be found at school”, and the History of Parliament volumes for 1386–1421 (Roskell, Clark and Rawcliffe, 1993) call him “the illegitimate son of his second wife Margery Haines (who afterwards called himself Thomas Bessels and claimed to be Sir Peter’s son and heir)”. His date of birth is not known.