♂William Bessiles

William Bessiles (about 1444 – 5 May 1515) was an English esquire of Bessels Leigh in Berkshire. When he made his will on 4 May 1515 he asked masses for the souls of his father and mother, Thomas and Clemence, and for the souls of “William Warbelton and Margery his wif”, the couple who, by his father-in-law’s account, had brought him up. He was the fourteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his daughter Elizabeth Bessiles.

Early life

William was the son of Thomas Bessiles and his wife Clemence. His father is said to have been a natural son of Sir Peter Bessiles of Bessels Leigh, who died in 1425 without lawful children, so neither Thomas nor his son could inherit any of the family’s lands. What they had came at the pleasure of Thomas’s mother, Margery Hannys, Sir Peter’s widow, and her second husband, William Warbelton, who provided for Thomas’s children for as long as he lived. Thomas died on 29 September 1458, when William was fourteen, and before his death he placed the boy in the Warbeltons’ keeping, his marriage included.

Marriage

With his consent, and by Richard Harcourt’s later account, William was married at the age of fourteen to Alice, a daughter of Richard Harcourt of Witham. William’s mother, Clemence, who had married John Nowers, claimed that Thomas’s will gave her the disposal of the boy’s marriage, and she and her husband sued Richard Harcourt in Chancery^W; how the suit ended is not known. Alice was William’s wife by 16 July 1461, when the manors of Radcot and Grafton in Oxfordshire were settled on the Warbeltons for life and then on William and Alice and their children. William Warbelton died in 1469, and on 16 June 1476 Margery surrendered Radcot and Grafton to William and Alice, who took possession. Their only child, Elizabeth, is said to have been born about 1475.

Public life

The boy who could inherit nothing ended his life as a substantial landholder in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somerset. He is said to have served twice as sheriff of Oxfordshire and Berkshire^W, in 1488 and 1500, and as a justice of the peace for Berkshire from 1509 to 1514. When his son-in-law Richard Fettiplace made his will in August 1510, he chose as a supervisor “my wifes fader William Besils”. In 1509–1511 William settled his estates: Carswell in Berkshire and Kings Brompton in Somerset on his grandson John Fettiplace and John’s wife Dorothy, and Bessels Leigh, Radcot and Grafton on Alice for her life and then on Elizabeth. By a deed of 16 December 1510 he set aside lands at Longworth to keep a priest of the Friars Preachers^W at Oxford saying mass for the souls of himself and Alice for eighty years.

Death

William styled himself “Willelmus Besilis Armiger” in the will he made on 4 May 1515. He asked to be buried “in the church of the ffreers prechors in Oxenford”, left money to the Grey, White and Austin friars of Oxford so that each house would keep mass for him and his family, and named his grandson John Fettiplace as executor. He died the next day, 5 May 1515, and the will was proved later that month. He was buried with the friars at Oxford. The inquisitions^W held after his death found that his heir was his daughter Elizabeth, by then the wife of Richard Eliot and aged forty and more.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his daughter Elizabeth, 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

His will is entered in the registers of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PROB 11/18, quire “Holder”); it opens “Anno dni Millesimo quingentesimo decimo quinto die quarto mensis Maij” and names “my ffather and moder Thomas and Clemens”. The date of probate is given as 14 May 1515 in one index, 15 May in J. Renton Dunlop’s account of the Besils family (Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5, 1923–25) and 18 May in Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry (pp. 263–264); the probate act itself is not known. The rest of his life comes from Dunlop’s abstracts of the records: the inquisition taken at Twyford on 31 October 1458 (“William Besyles, his son and heir, is aged 14 and more”), the Chancery suit of John Nowers and Clemence against Richard Harcourt, the 1484 inquisition on Margery’s death that recites the Radcot and Grafton settlement, the sheriff and justice lists, and the 1515–16 inquisitions in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Somerset that give his death on 5 May and the settlements of 1509–1511. Richardson calls him William Bessiles (or Bessels), Esq., of Bessels Leigh, West Hall and Carswell, Longworth, Grafton and Radcot, and says he was buried with the Friars Preachers at Oxford; his widow’s will of 1526 speaks of the friars at Oxford “where my husbonde is buryed”. The name is also written Besils, Besyles, Besylles and Besilis.

His father’s birth

Dunlop’s pedigree of the family joins Thomas to Sir Peter Bessiles by the wavy line used for a child born outside marriage, and a Chancery bill of Thomas’s own calls him “Thomas Besyles, son of Sir Piers Besyles, knight”. In his answer to the Nowers suit Richard Harcourt said that Thomas, “considering that 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”, had given his son into their care. Sir Peter’s own heir in 1425 was a cousin, Robert Cramford. Richardson calls Thomas “of Carswell” and suggests that Clemence was perhaps a daughter of John Lydyard; no record names her parents.