Joan Tamworth - Four Husbands. ..

I find this a bit fishy, frankly. She starts off in Cornwall, which is the most southwestern corner of England, marrying a John Wynnow in 1352; he (so we are told) dies in 1370. She next shows up in Buckinghamshire - halfway across the island and a good ways north - marrying a Sir Nicholas Tamworth in 1371. (How'd she get there?) Next she's in Berkshire (this is only one county south, so not as "wtf?") marrying Sir Warin de Lisle, widower, in 1377. She finds her fourth(?) husband in Berkshire also, one Sir Gilbert Talbot, widower, married Oct 1384.

Another oddity is that Tamworth, the town from which Sir Nicholas derived his surname, is in Staffordshire, a long way north and west of Buckinghamshire; but extant records indicate that Sir Nicholas had a "roving commission" and probably a disposition to match.

It starts to smell when you find a 1361 record that Sir Nicholas Tamworth *and his wife Johanna* are possessed for life of certain manors. Supposedly she didn't marry him until 1371. Do we even have the same Joan/Johanna?

We do find a "certified transcript" of a record that Sir Nicholas (de) Tamworth and his wife Joan were granted free warren in the manor of St. Winnowe, Cornwall, by Edward III in 1371; but this is not proof that she was born, raised, or married to a first husband there - kings were in the habit of scattering their grants around the kingdom. And the transcript only dates from 1607 - one would like to know who made it, for whom, and why.

While it appears to be the case that Sir Gilbert Talbot married a Johanna, widow of Sir Nicholas Tamworth (Talbot and Tamworth had worked together on the King's business, so were acquainted), the earliest record of this dates from 1391.

From a genealogical standpoint, though, she appears to be a null factor: no children by any husband.

"Sir Warin de Lisle" - who turns out to be the second Baron de Lisle, c. 1330-28 Jun 1382 - may or may not get a look-in: some sources give his second wife as a Jane Fitzalan, and given de Lisle's Arundel connections this is plausible. Also one would think he, rather than Sir Nicholas, would have been mentioned as Joan's previous husband, being clearly of much higher rank. But in contemporary documents he is not.

All told, I think we can grant Joan two husbands for certain (Sir Nicholas and Sir Gilbert), reserve judgement on the Baron de Lisle, and wonder what's up with the "Wynnowe" business.

The fur really flies in this discussion! https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/uE_51X... (Joan de Tamworth is mentioned only briefly, with Douglas Richardson - who is in the thick of it - maintaining the "four husbands" story based on the entry for Sir Gilbert Talbot (MP) in History of Parliament (Online) http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1386-1421/member/ta... .

I should point out that I find this source useful, but not necessarily authoritative - it contains mistakes, omissions, and contradictions.

Sir Nicholas Tamworth apparently was also an MP, for dates prior to those the History covers - so no further information from that source.

As for John Wynnow, the manor and village of St. Wynnowe (St. Winnow) in Cornwall was at this period held by a family that styled themselves "de St. Wynnowe". It would appear that the family daughtered out in the late 14th century and the properties passed through divers hands until the Lower family bought it up early in the 16th century.

If "John Wynnow" was actually John de St. Wynnowe, Joan did little or nothing to help him hold onto the family lands (Richardson alleges a daughter Alice, who married a Sir Ralph Barry).

I can't help wondering if two Joans have gotten mashed together: Joan (de St.) Wynnowe/de Lisle, and Joan Tamworth/Talbot.

Maven,

Thanks. I wondered about the possibility of two different Joans, as well. Tamworth /Talbot is what I have mostly seen, in terms of what makes sense.

The whole matter is very perplexing. There is a definite legal record that "Gilbert Talbot and Joan, his wife, sued John Plays, Kt., for a third of the manor of Mundeford as dower of Joan of the dotation of Waryn de Lysle, her former husband", Michaelmas term (i.e. autumn) 8 Ric. II (1385). Pedigrees from the Plea Rolls, https://archive.org/stream/pedigreesfromple00wrotrich#page/156/mode...

But it's the sort of thing you really have to dig for, and it raises more questions than it gives answers. Just who exactly *was* this Joan, how did she attract three prominent men, why are some of the connections dropped (pure carelessness, perhaps?), and who the heck is "John Wynnow", her first husband?

That first husband is the only one who matters from a straight genealogical perspective, since he's the only one from whom she had any offspring (per Cokayne - although he doesn't answer the "who was this guy?" question either - there was a daughter Alice; Richardson was right about that).

And just to put the cork in it, the profile attached to this discussion is the *wrong* Joan Tamworth, married to the *wrong* Sir Nicholas.

Our Joan would have been born c. 1330-1335, married John Wynnow c. 1350, had Alice some time between then and 1360, married Sir Nicholas (de) Tamworth before 1361 (he died c. 1376), married Warin de Lisle c. 1377 (he died 1382), married Sir Gilbert Talbot (by) Oct. 1384, and finally died in 1392. Busy lady!

I still don't see how she got from Cornwall to Buckinghamshire - *if* she did, and didn't merely have, or John Wynnow had, a distant ancestral connection to it.

Well, here's Warin de Lisle, anyway: Warin del Lisle, 2nd Lord de Lisle ("Jane Fitzalan" is bogus and needs to be disconnected. That's where Joan Wynnow Tamworth would fit in.)

And here's Sir Gilbert Talbot. Times two. Gilbert Talbot, Justice of the Peace for Berkshire & Wiltshire and Unknown Profile

Another piece of the puzzle just fell into place. Joan didn't go from Cornwall to Buckinghamshire - or not alone. Sir Nicholas de Tamworth is recorded as a Member of Parliament for Cornwall County in 1364-65, and for Berkshire (not Buckinghamshire) in 1366. It looks as though he started out as a West-Country man (said to be from Devonshire; acquired Cornish wife and stood to Parliament from Cornwall; granted manors in Dorset, 1366) and obtained his lands in Buckinghamshire (Newton Longvill) as a reward for loyal service - he seems to have been constantly about the King's business from 1360 to 1376, up and down the country and overseas as well. (The last official record of him seems to be a commission of March 28, 1376, to put Southampton and the Isle of Wight in a state of defence.)

Charters and Records Among the Archives of the Ancient Abbey of Cluni (Google Books) has much to say about Sir Gilbert Talbot (pp. 135-194, passim) and some strong indications of just how busy a man Sir Nicholas Tamworth was (footnote 211, pp. 171-172).