Agnes de Bereford

Agnes de BEREFORD  was born 1300 in Wishaw, Warwickshire, England. She died 18 Jul 1375 in Lytchett Matravers, Dorset, England. Agnes married Sir John d' ARGENTEIN Knight on 1317 in Great Wymondley, Hertfordshire, England.

Other marriages:

1. NARFORD, John de Knight
2. MAUTRAVERS, John Lord Mautravers

They had the following children:

1. Sir John d' ARGENTEIN Knight was born Apr 1318 and died 26 Nov 1382.

From http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/families/arg/argframe.shtml

Agnes is the first woman in the family for whom we have more than cursory references. She survived her first husband for 57 years, and remarried twice; she is also the first of the family whose will survives.

Agnes was the daughter of William de Bereford, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (d.1326). She was one of three sisters, who eventually became the legal coheirs of their brother Edmund de Bereford, though their eventual inheritance of his estates was delayed and complicated by the presence of Edmund's two illegitimate sons, John and Baldwin.

When John de Argentein died, shortly before 20 October 1318, his heir John, Agnes's son, was a baby of 6 months (Calendar of Inqusitions Post Mortem). The following January, Agnes was granted generous dower estates, consisting of the manors of Great and Little Wymondley and Melbourn, with lands in Throcking, Colney and Halesworth (Close Roll). On the same day, the keeping of the bulk of the remaining Argentein estates - the manors of Halesworth and Ketteringham, with lands in Melton, Pidley, Weston and Ketteringham - during the minority of the heir was granted to Agnes's father, William de Bereford (Fine Roll).

These dower provisions seem generous, including as they do the family's original seat at Great Wymondley and the manor of Melbourn, where they seem to have been living in 1318. But more was to follow - in 1324 an order was made for further dower lands to be delivered to her, in Wallington, Melbourn and Ashendon, together with the advowsons of St Benet's church in Cambridge and the chapel of Saints Simon and Jude in Newmarket (Close Roll). In addition, she was found in 1359 to be holding in dower the chapel and the advowson of the Hospital of St Nicholas, Royston (Close Roll). We can only wonder if William de Bereford, the Chief Justice, exerted his influence in his daughter's interest when the dower lands were being allotted.

In February 1321, Agnes received, at her father's request, royal licence to marry whoever she wished (Patent Roll). Agnes's second marriage, to John de Nerford, was, like her first, short-lived. John died, without issue, on 5 February 1329 (Complete Peerage, vol.1; Blomefield, vol.5, p.305). In addition to the dower estates she had from her first marriage, Agnes received more from her second, namely the manors of Wissett in Suffolk, and Tharston and Shotesham in Norfolk (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem).

It is interesting to note that, although by this time William de Bereford was dead, another member of the family, Simon de Bereford, was now an influential member of the government. Simon was apparently Agnes's brother (though I have not seen the relationship stated in a contemporary document). After William de Bereford's death, Simon had, in January 1327, been granted custody of the Argentein estates, 'in consideration of his good service' (Patent Roll); a few months later the Argentein lands in Exning and Newmarket were added (Memoranda Roll). The day after the first of these grants, Edward II was formally deposed (later, apparently, to be secretly murdered), and Queen Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer effectively took power. Simon de Bereford was a close supporter of Mortimer, and was subsequently appointed to the Council as one of his representatives. When Mortimer fell in 1330, Simon was attainted as a traitor and executed, 'for aiding and counselling Roger Mortimer in all his treasons, including the murder of the king'.

It was probably through Simon de Bereford that Agnes met her third husband, John Maltravers, who was also a leading supporter of Mortimer. The couple could have been married only a short time before he, like her brother, was sentenced to death, in November 1330 - he was condemned for encompassing the death of the earl of Kent by convincing him that his brother, Edward II was still alive. (Cuttino and Lyman). This is ironic, because Maltravers has won notoriety as - it is presumed - one of Edward's murderers, at Berkeley Castle in September 1327.

John Maltravers escaped execution and fled into exile in Flanders. Agnes remained in England, and was possibly in a state of financial embarrassment for a few months, as his lands had been confiscated. If so, her distress did not last long - in February 1331 her dower lands from her first two marriages were restored to her at the request of Queen Philippa, and the restoration was confirmed by several more grants in the following months (Patent Rolls).

In July 1332, Agnes received a licence to cross the Channel from Dover, as she was going on pilgrimage. In fact, this seems to have been a pretext to visit her husband in Flanders. This was the start of a long process of rehabilitation for Maltravers, who seems to have gained favour by acting as an agent for England in Flanders during the 1330s, being particularly helpful when an Anglo-Flemish alliance was cemented in 1340. Perhaps as a result, in 1342, Agnes received permission to stay with Maltravers in Flanders as long as she wished (Tout, Cuttino and Lyman). Over the following decade, the process continued until, eventually, John Maltravers was pardoned, and had his estates restored to him in February 1352 (Cuttino and Lyman).

In 1354 Agnes's brother, Edmund de Bereford, died. He had two illegitimate sons, John and Baldwin, on whom most of his property was settled. However, Agnes and her sisters Joan and Margaret seem to have inherited some property at this time, including the manor of Adwell (VCH Oxfordshire) and lands in Long Wittenham (VCH Berkshire). Agnes appears to have disposed of these lands before her own death. Much of the property settled on Edmund's illegitimate sons did eventually pass to the heirs of the three sisters, after the deaths of Baldwin de Bereford in 1405 and his widow Elizabeth in 1423.

Agnes was widowed for a third time when John Maltravers died in 1364. The couple had no children, having been separated for 12 years early in their marriage. Agnes again received extensive dower lands, this time from the Maltravers estates in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem).

In the remaining decade of her life, Agnes must have been financially very comfortable, holding dower lands from her three marriages in eight counties (Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem). Judging from her will, even in her mid-70s she was accustomed to travel between the Maltravers lands in the West of England, and the Argentein and Nerford manors in the East. Perhaps she spent most of her time in the West, however, as there is some evidence that the Argentein estates fell into neglect during her tenure - in her son's Inquisition Post Mortem, both the buildings of the manor and the windmill were found to be valueless on account of their ruinous condition (Palmer, p.77)

Agnes died in July 1375, having made her will in London the previous February. The will, a long document in French, opens with a long list of gifts to religious houses (including the Argentein foundations of Wymondley Priory and Royston Hospital), and also many bequests of personal items to relatives and others. Agnes wished to be buried near John Maltravers in the church of Lychet Maltravers if she died in Dorset or Wiltshire, but in Wymondley Priory if she died in Hertfordshire or Cambridgeshire. Of her Argentein relatives, she mentions her son John, his wife Margaret, and their daughters, Maud the wife of Ivo fitz Waren and Elizabeth the wife of Baldwin St George (though curiously she refers to her granddaughters Maud and Elizabeth as her 'daughters').

Links

• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hwbradley/aqwg180...
• http://histfam.familysearch.org/getperson.php?personID=I192&tree=Pa...
• http://www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk/families/arg/argframe.shtml

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https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101701824/agnes-mautravers

"Daughter of William de Bereford by Margaret de Pleshy. Wife and widow of Sir John d' Argentine who died in 1318. Secondly, wife and widow of John de Nerford who died in 1329. Thirdly, second wife and again widow of Sir John Mautravers, the son of Sir Knight John de Mautravers and Eleanor de Gorges, no issue. (His family name originated from Lytchett Matravers, Dorset, England)"