♂William de Legh

William de Legh (died after 1296) was an English landholder of the reign of Edward I, lord of the manor of Leigh in Berkshire, who in the 1290s also acquired lands at Kingston in Warwickshire. He was the nineteenth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006) by two separate lines of descent, both through his son John de Legh (died after 1348).

Life

William was most likely the son and heir of Thomas de Legh. He was in possession of Leigh, the Berkshire manor later called Bessels Leigh, by 1292. In 1294 and again in 1296 he took lands and rents at Kingston, in the parish of Chesterton in Warwickshire, from Roger and Maud de Leye. Nothing later is known of him, and his wife’s name is not known.

Both manors passed to John de Legh, probably his son, and from John to his daughter Katherine, who married the knight Thomas Bessiles. William also had a daughter, Alice, whose line came back into the story more than a century later: in 1425, when his great-grandson Sir Peter Bessiles died without a lawful child, the inquest^W taken at Warwick named as the next heir Robert Cramford, the son of Alice’s daughter Margaret.

Lines of descent

Both lines run through his son John, John’s daughter Katherine de Legh, her 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

His lordship of Leigh comes from the Victoria County History of Berkshire, vol. 4 (1924), under Bessels Leigh, p. 395: “William, the son of Thomas, was in possession in 1292”, citing the feet of fines^W for Berkshire, 20 Edward I, no. 7. The Kingston grants of 1294 and 1296 from Roger and Maud de Leye are in the Victoria County History of Warwickshire, vol. 5 (1949), under Chesterton, p. 43. The 1425 inquest on Sir Peter Bessiles, taken at Warwick on 12 May 1425, is calendared in the Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, vol. 22, no. 447: “Robert Cramford is his next heir as son of Margaret daughter of Alice sister of John father of Katherine mother of this Peter, and is aged 50 years.”

His parentage and his heir

The Warwickshire history says “This William was apparently son and heir of Thomas de Leigh” and that he was succeeded by John de Leigh; the Berkshire history calls John “evidently the heir of William”. A manuscript in the Harley collection (Harley MS 1139, fol. 110) gives “John the son of William son of Thomas”.

An earlier William

J. Renton Dunlop’s account of the Besils family in Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 5th series, vol. 5 (1923–25), Note 21, makes John the son of a William “who had possession of Kingston in 36 Henry III” (1252). The Warwickshire history shows that this was an earlier William, the son of Felice, living 1220–1247; Thomas de Legh seems to have come between the two.