♂William de Mandeville

William de Mandeville^W (died in or just before 1130) was the twenty-sixth great-grandfather of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through his daughter Beatrice de Mandeville.

His children

An Anglo-Norman nobleman, William is known almost entirely through his children. His son Geoffrey de Mandeville^W, first Earl of Essex, rose under King Stephen to the earldom of Essex. William is said to have been dead by 1130, when Geoffrey answered at the exchequer for his father’s lands. The line from Beatrice down to the Blanchards is probably correct; the reason it is not certain is given in the Notes.

Beatrice and the inheritance

Beatrice, his daughter, was Geoffrey’s only sister. When their nephew William de Mandeville, third Earl of Essex, died childless in 1189, she was the heir to the whole Mandeville inheritance. William’s wife is not known for certain, and the records name no other child of his.

Notes

Sources

William’s death in or just before 1130, his son Geoffrey and his daughter Beatrice are from the Complete Peerage (2nd ed., vol. 5, 1926, Essex, pp. 113 and 121), a printed compilation. The Complete Peerage’s account of Geoffrey’s succession notes that in the Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I Geoffrey de Mandeville accounted for his father’s lands, from which J. H. Round inferred that the father had recently died.

His wife

The Complete Peerage gives Geoffrey’s mother only as “it is said”, with a story that it treats as likely belonging to an earlier wife, and does not enter her. She is left out here.

The office of Constable

The Complete Peerage describes Geoffrey, not William, as Constable of the Tower of London. The Wikipedia article on William gives the office to him, but the Complete Peerage does not, so the page leaves it out.

The descent through John Washburn

The line from Beatrice to the Washburns runs through John Washburn of Bengeworth (died 1547), whose identification as a son of Joan Mitton is the work of James Davenport, the Washbournes’ historian, and not of a record; the descent is probable.