Joan Waterton, wife of Lord Welles - a CP contradiction?
John Higgins
In more recent publications, PA3 follows the version in CP 12.2, while its successor publication RPA does not give a mother for Joan Waterton, thus suggesting that it follows the version in CP 5:193 - and RPA also does not show a Plantagenet descent for Joan Waterton, which would exist if her mother were Joan Everingham.
Can anyone help to clarify this apparent contradiction in CP?
On the subject of Everingham, RPA apparently overlooks a Plantagenet descent, via Everingham, for Barbara Sothill, wife of Sir Marmaduke Constable (for which, see the chart at CP 5:193).
Tim Powys-Lybbe
> CP 12.2:44, sub Welles, shows Joan/Cecily Waterton, the wife of
> Lionel, 6th Lord Welles, as the dau. of Robert Waterton of Methley by
> his wife Joan the widow of Sir William Ellis of Kidall and dau. of
> William de Everingham of Laxton. But CP 5:193, in a footnote to a
> chart of the heirs of the Everingham family, says that Joan
> [Waterton] Welles was the dau. of Robert, not by Joan Everingham, but
> by a second unnamed wife. CP 12.2 cites sources (albeit secondary
> ones) while CP 5 does not.
The 1998 Corrections volume of CP, XIV, p. 311, has this cryptic
amendment for CP V, 193:
page 193,
line 3 of pedigree, delete '2' above 'Methley'
I take this to mean that Joan Everingham's marriage to Robert Waterton
is to be deleted.
In the past I have been told by a private e-mail that:
"A modern researcher has suggested that this Joan was in fact the
daughter of Robert Waterton, Constable of Pontefract Castle and her
mother was Cecily Fleming. Cecily Fleming was the heir in her issue
(Joan) of her father Sir Robert Fleming of Woodhall Methey. Cecily had
a brother Robert Fleming, dean of Lincoln who apparently dsp."
I have found no evidence to support this and the marriage of this Joan
Waterton to Lionel Welles does not sound quite grand enough to have
been arranged in the way that most such marriages were.
--
Tim Powys-Lybbe t...@powys.org
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org
John Higgins
marriage. I suppose it could be read to say that the 2nd marriage of Joan
Everingham should be deleted, but one could hope that the editor of CP 14
would have been more explicit if that were the case. In a narrower reading
of the amendment, I assumed that he was saying that the Everingham marriage
was not the 2nd marriage for Robert Waterton - although why he needed to say
this, given the footnote in the original CP 5, is unclear.
Also CP 14 does not show a corresponding correction for CP 12.2, which would
be necessary if the marriage were to be deleted.
Clagett, Brice
Waterton (c. 1362-1425), Henry IV's henchman and master
of the horse, and longtime constable of Pontefract (not a
knight, _pace_ RPA p. 758), were H. Armstrong Hall, "Some
Notes on the Personal and Family History of Robert Waterton,
of Methley and Waterton," Publications of the Thoresby
Society 15:81 (1909), and J.W. Walker, "The Burghs of Cam-
bridgeshire and Yorkshire and the Watertons of Lincolnshire
and Yorkshire," Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 30:369 (1931).
Both articles say that the well-known Robert Waterton married
Cecily Fleming and had a son, also named Robert (whom I will
call the pseudo-Robert), who married Joan (Everingham) Ellis,
which younger couple had a son, a third Robert, and a daughter,
Joan (or Cecily), who married Leo, 6th Lord Welles, in 1417.
On this view the well-known Robert made his will (naming wife
Cecily) on Jan. 10, 1424/5 (set forth in Hall pp. 87-88), and his
death was followed "with dramatic suddenness" by that of his
son Robert (of whom nothing else whatever is recorded) on Jan.
17, 1424/5, according to his inquisitions post mortem, CIPM 22:
349-51. Robert's late wife Joan (Everingham) figures in the ipms
because Robert had held by curtesy the manors of Joan's first
husband, Sir William Ellis, and it had to be determined who the
heir of those manors was; it was found that he was Joan's son
Robert Ellis, aged 40 years and more in 1425. Walker's article
(though not Hall's) recognizes that the Robert of the ipms had
a later wife, Margaret (Clarell) Fitzwilliam, who survived him.
The age of Robert Ellis in 1425 is a strong pointer towards the
truth. Since he was born by 1385, his mother (Joan) would have
been a full generation older than her second husband if that
husband (the pseudo-Robert) was the son of Robert c. 1362-
1425. And in fact Joan appears to have been born in 1362/3; see
CP 5:193. Both the chronology and Occam's razor require that
the pseudo-Robert be expunged. One will, one death in Jan.
1424/5, one set of ipms = one Robert, who married (1) Joan
(Evereingham) Ellis, (2), between 1399 and 1403, Cecily Fleming,
(3), in 1422 or 1423, Margaret (Clarell) Fitzwilliam. While Robert's
will calls Cecily his wife, it does not say that she was then living;
if anything it implies the contrary, providing only for prayers and
memorials for Robert and Cecily. If it be objected that the will does
not mention Waterton's living wife, Margaret, it does not mention
his two children either; the only persons named in the will are the
executors, supervisors and witnesses.
Various records, mostly cited by Walker, show that Waterton
married Cecily between 1399 and 1403 and was still married to her
in 1412; she is said to have died in 1422, though I don't know what
the proof of that is. Waterton's son Robert, aged 16 in 1425, was
clearly hers. It seems less clear whether Joan or Cecily was the mother
of Lady Welles, since we seem to lack a record of her age at any
time. (Lady Welles is usually referred to cautiously as Joan or Cecily;
if she was Cecily that would strongly indicate that her mother was
Cecily also. But, while more-or-less original sources support both
versions, in my opinion the best are four ipms of John, 5th Lord
Welles, CIPM 21:306-07, which uniformly called her Joan.)
The sketch of Robert Waterton in the new ODNB is in accord with
the above analysis, though it does not supply its reasoning or
discuss conflicting views.
Clagett, Brice
on further analysis it seems that the earliest known record
of Cecily as wife of Robert Waterton is from 1407/8, not
1403.
John Higgins
clears up at least some of the confusion in this family. It seems that the
contradiction in CP regarding the maternity of the Joan or Cecily Waterton
who married Lord Welles still remains - probably to be unresolved for now.
I agree with you that the references in the IPMs of the 5th Lord Welles (the
grandfather of the husband of Joan/Cecily) would seem to make a good case
that her name was Joan (although I'd be curious about other "original"
sources that lean to Cecily). As you say, if she were named Cecily that
would be a strong argument for her mother being Cecily (and also fit well
with comments in another post regarding the names of the granddaughters of
Joan/Cecily). But I would tend to favor the IPMs over onomastic conjectures,
which can be pretty slippery in a case like this. If she was named Joan,
that wouldn't preclude her mother from being Cecily.....I guess we'll never
know....
Clagett, Brice
Welles Cecily. According to Hall's article referred to in my
original post, p. 92, the 1477 ipm of Sir Robert Waterton (d. 1476,
son of Robert Waterton and Cecily Fleming) names as his heirs
the four daughters of his sister, Cecilia, Lady Welles. This
long postdates the ipm of John, 5th Lord Welles, taken in 1421
in Lady Welles' lifetime, which calls her Joan.
I have seen only the abstract of Sir Robert Waterton's ipm
in Hall's article. If the abstract is correct in calling Lady Welles
"sister" of the decedent, is that evidence in favor of Cecily
Fleming as Lady Welles' mother? I doubt it; Lady Welles'
children would have been Sir Robert's heirs no matter whether
she was his full sister or half-sister. And, even if "sister" is
deemed to mean full sister, if I am right that the
1477 ipm got Lady Welles' name wrong it would not seem a
terribly reliable source for her maternity.
Chris Phillips
Clagett, Brice wrote:
> I have seen only the abstract of Sir Robert Waterton's ipm
> in Hall's article. If the abstract is correct in calling Lady Welles
> "sister" of the decedent, is that evidence in favor of Cecily
> Fleming as Lady Welles' mother? I doubt it; Lady Welles'
> children would have been Sir Robert's heirs no matter whether
> she was his full sister or half-sister. And, even if "sister" is
> deemed to mean full sister, if I am right that the
> 1477 ipm got Lady Welles' name wrong it would not seem a
> terribly reliable source for her maternity.
I would say that if Sir Robert's IPM names Cecily's children as his heirs,
that means that she was a full sister, not a half sister, as half-blood
relations could not be heirs. Unless the lands in question had been
specifically entailed so that they would pass to the issue of a half
sibling, the heir would be a more distant full-blood relation.
Chris Phillips
Clagett, Brice
Waterton (d. 1425), the father of Joan, Lady Welles.
Walker's article in Yorkshire Arch. Journal vol. 30 says that Robert
was the third son of William Waterton, of Waterton, and his wife,
Elizabeth Newmarch. (To compound the confusion, the article at
p. 368 says that Robert was third son of JOHN Waterton, but the
pedigree at the end shows that the statement on p. 368 was a care-
less error.) If the pedigree is accurate, Robert Waterton had royal
ancestry through his mother, daughter of Roger Mewmarch of Womers-
ley, Yorkshire, who was son of Adam Newmarch and his wife, Eliza-
beth, daughter of Sir Roger de Mowbray, 5th feudal Baron of Mowbray.
Hall's article in Thoresby Soc. Publications vol. 15 expresses doubt
as to where Robert fits into the family, but leans towards the view that
he was son of John Waterton, son of William Waterton (who accordi
ing to the Walker article married Elizabeth Newmarch). This seems
more comfortable chronologically, because according to the Walker
article William Waterton was alive though not yet of full age in 1316,
and Robert was not born until the 1360s.
Roskell's History of Parliament sub John Waterton says that it is
"demonstrably untrue" that Robert Waterton was son of William,
citing a royal pardon of 1398 which says Robert was son of Richard
Waterton of Waterton. Walker's article shows a Richard Waterton
(who may have lived at Waterton though he was not the owner of the
manor), fl. 1379, dead in 1392, who was a second cousin once removed
of William Waterton who (allegedly) married Elizabeth Newmarch.
ODNB sub Robert Waterton says that Robert was a son of William
Waterton and Elizabeth Newmarch, and was "apparently the cousin
of Sir Hugh Waterton." But the same oracle, sub Sir Hugh Waterton,
says that Hugh was the second son of William Waterton and Elizabeth
Newmarch -- and was a cousin of Robert! Obviously both entries
cannot be right.
What a mess. As far as I can see at the moment, the most likely
version is that of the 1398 pardon cited by Roskell. Perhaps Roskell is
a bit dogmatic concluding that it is "demonstrably untrue" that Robert
was son of William -- surely this would not be the only time that a
14th-century pardon was mistaken as to the name of the pardonee's
father -- but it seems to be the most concrete evidence that we have.