Edge, Branscombe

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Edge Barton, south front

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Edge Barton, viewed from south-east

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Edge Barton, viewed from east. The top of the circular staircase tower is visible in the corner of the north and west wings (right)

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Edge Barton, setting

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Ancient graffitis featuring sailing boats, inscribed on stone window splay in an upper floor room, Edge Barton

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Remains of late C13-early C14 rose window, Edge Barton. In upper gable wall between two rooms in south wing. The tracery contains 4 cusped trefoils. The wall is thought to have formed the west wall of a late C13-early C14 chapel

Edge (anciently Egge) is an historic manor in the parish of Branscombe, Devon. The surviving manor house, now known as Edge Barton Manor, is a grade II* listed building situated on the steep south-facing side of a wooded valley, or combe. Not in origin a manor house, Edge was one of the first stone-built houses in Branescombe on a villein holding called La Regge. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited houses in England.

Description

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Edge Barton, Branscombe, view from south-west; right: 1888 drawing

The house is U-Shaped. Only a short section survives of the original moat. A circular staircase is contained in the angle of the north wing so as to give access to a second floor, newly created by the addition of a raised ceiling to the great hall.

The stone splay of an upstairs window shows ancient graffiti-incised drawings of sailing ships thought to represent those of the Spanish Armada becalmed offshore near Branscombe in 1588; the logbook of the San Martin, flagship to Captain-General Alonso Perez de Guzman, Duke of Medina Sidonia, records 130 ships of the Spanish Armada being becalmed there between Start Point and Portland Bill in July, 1588.

Chapel

A chapel was attached to the manor house from at least 1290. Possibly built by Bishop Walter Branscombe, it occupied the present south wing, where a large rose window containing 4 cusped trefoils measuring 6 ft 6 inches in diameter and originally set within the outer gable of the west wall survives on what is now an internal wall, hidden behind a later chimney stack up in the attic. Lysons in 1822, described the chapel as being in a poor state of repair, and desecrated. An ancient stone piscina has also survived, reset into a wall in the hall.

Descent of the manor

de Branscombe

Edge (or Egge) first appears in the records in 1218 in connection with the de Branscombe family (also spelled Bronscomb, Branescombe, Bronescombe, and Brounscomb) who took their name from the manor, and held it until the late 14th century. According to Hoskins, Walter Branscombe (c. 1220 – 1280), Bishop of Exeter from 1258 to 1280 was a member of the family, and possibly born there. In 1299, a Richard de Branscombe of Edge was elected a Freeman of the City of Exeter, one of the first to be so. His probable son, Adam Branscombe, was twice Member of Parliament for Devon in 1340 and 1348, whose daughter Agnes Branscombe married Sir Richard Champernowne of Modbury and had three children by him, Sir Otho Champernowne (d.1422), John, and Elizabeth. A likely relative is Thomas Branscombe, the Member of Parliament for Plympton Erle in 1393, as is another Branscombe of the period who was rector of Lustleigh on Dartmoor. Three members of the family were Sheriffs of Devon. The last of these, Sir Richard Branscombe of Edge, a judge, and "a man well learned in the laws of the land", was three times Sheriff of Devon during the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377), in 1359, 1367 and 1375. In 1353 he married Margaret, widow of Sir John de Beauchamp of Ryme, Dorset. The arms of Branscombe were stated by Pole as: Gules, a chevron vairy between three martlets or. For Bishop "Brounscombe" of Exeter he gives: Or on a chevron sable three caterfoiles or two keys in chief a sword in base argent. Even allowing for stripping out the keys and sword, both elements of the arms of the See of Exeter, the arms are very different.

Wadham

Arms of Wadham: Gules, a chevron between three roses argent

Towards the end of the reign of King Edward III (1327-1377), the estate of Edge was acquired by the de Wadham family who took their name from the manor of Wadham on Exmoor near the parish of Knowstone,(apparently the two separate manors of Chenudestane and Chenuestan in Domesday Book, and even more anciently known as Cnudstone and Cnutston; with the probable meaning "Canutestone") near South Moulton, in North Devon. A separate manor of "Wadeham" is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as being held-in-chief from William the Conqueror (1066-1087) by the Saxon Thane Ulf, who before 1066 held Wadeham and many other manors from the Saxon King Edward the Confessor (1042-1066). Only twenty Anglo-Saxon thanes in Devonshire survived the Conquest and retained their antiquated status as thanes, and as Ulf is still described in 1086 as "one of the King's Thanes", it is likely he was serving the Norman king satisfactorily. Samuel Lysons (1822) suggested that the de Wadham family may have been descendants of Ulf. Another thane (or thegn), Algar, is mentioned in Domesday as holding Chenuestan and Chenudestane from the King; as an Algar de Wadham exists in the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272), he too may have been an ancestor. Certainly a William Wadham is freeholder of East and West Wadham by the time of King Edward I (1272-1307). In about 1370 Edge, Branscombe was acquired by the Wadham family, and held by them for a further eight generations until on the death of Dorothy Wadham in 1618, the widow of Nicholas Wadham, co-founders of Wadham College, Oxford, it passed with Nicholas's other possessions, including the manors of Wadham, Knowstone, Lustleigh, Silverton, Rewe, Penselwood, Halberton, Chiselborough, Hardington Mandeville, Chilton Cantelo, Trent and Merryfield, Ilton to the heirs general of his father, his nieces and their descendants. The descent of the Wadham family of Edge is given by Pole as follows:

Sir John I Wadham

Sir John I Wadham, who we find residing at Edge before the end of the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377). In 1374, Lady Wadham was given permission to celebrate mass in her private chapel at Edge.

Sir John II Wadham (c.1344-1412)

Sir John II Wadham, was a Justice of the Common Pleas from 1389 to 1398 during the reign of King Richard II (1377-1399). He was MP for Exeter in 1399 and after Richard II was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, who became King Henry IV (1399-1413), was MP for Devon in 1401 as a Knight of the Shire. Sir John Wadham 'the judge', was one of Prince's Worthies of Devon: "All I have met with him further, is this encomium" says the Devonshire biographer, "that being free of speech, he mingled it well with discretion; so that he never touched any man, how mean so ever, out of order, either for sport or spight; but with alacrity of spirit and soundness of understanding menaged all his proceedings". Although Pole and Prince both stated him to be the son of Sir John I Wadham above, his modern History of Parliament biographer suggests he was the son of Gilbert Wadham (c.1320-1383), who in 1383 quitclaimed to him a rent in Wadham. The deed was witnessed by Sir John's lifelong friend and colleague Sir William Hankford (c. 1350 – 1423) of Annery, Monkleigh in Devon, Chief Justice of the King's Bench from 1413 until 1423. The biographer adds: "It is curious that the origins of a man of such distinction as Wadham should have been lost... If his origins are obscure, so too are the beginnings of his career as a lawyer. Where he received his education is not known, but by 1371 he was practicing in the central courts as an attorney." As he writes of another of his colleagues and a fellow sergeant-at-law, John Hill,"like many families which owe their rise to proficiency in the law, the Hills were obscure in origin." Prince points out that at this time there were no less than five sergeants at law, all natives of Devon; Cary, two Hills, Hankford and Wadham. Wadham was a sergeant-at-law by 1383, and in 1384 was in receipt of a livery from Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon, being one of his legal counsel. His biographer gives us an insight into Wadham's independence and integrity: One of the earl of Devon's retainers had been indicted for murder, and Sir James Chudleigh of Ashton and Sir William Sturmy (or 'Esturmy'of Wulfhall) had approached the earl in an attempt to prevent a disturbance, whereupon the earl had not only threatened Sturmy but had accused Wadham as a "false justice." When, notwithstanding, the trial proceeded, Sir John Grenville a cousin of the Courtenays, brought a message from the earl to Wadham charging him to "sit more uprightly, without partiality in this session than the last." Those are the words of one who has failed to influence the course of justice, and the earl's attempts to save his retainer "in spite of the teeth of the said John Wadham and William Sturmy" resulted in his appearance before the King's Council and a stern warning to respect the law in future. Wadham's appointment as an arbitrator in one of Sir Philip Courtenay's disputes only a few months later, and his connection with other members of the Courtenay family, perhaps suggest that the earl's words are not to be taken as a deep-seated grudge against him, although earl Edward may well have resented the show of independence displayed by his former counsellor. In 1387, only three years after he was constituted a judge, he was made a King's serjeant. "He had a large practice, and thereby made a great addition to his estates" adding to his ancestral estate at Wadham, and Edge, and the 'inquisitio post mortem' in 1413 mentions six manors in Gloucestershire, Dorset, and Somerset, among the latter being 'Muryfield' near Ilminster, acquired around 1400, and three manors in Devon, besides lands and messuages in 23 parishes. His Devon landholdings included the manors of Wadham, Silverton, and half the manor of Harberton both purchased, in 1386 and 1390 respectively, from Cecily Turberville married in 1368, as his second wife, to Sir Richard (or Gilbert) Turberville of Bere Regis, Somerset and Coity Castle, Glamorgan. The eventual extinction of the once-mighty de Turbervilles of Bere Regis became, in time, the inspiration for the fictional D'Urbervilles of Kingsbere in the novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Cecily Turberville was sister and a co-heiress of John de Beauchamp, 3rd Baron Beauchamp of Hatch, or "Hache"(1329–1361), of the feudal barony of Hatch Beauchamp, Admiral of the Fleet and Warden of the Cinque Ports, whose first husband was Sir Roger I St Maur (1314-1362), of the Seymour family of Hatch Beauchamp, and later, of Wulfhall or Wolfhall, ancestor of the Dukes of Somerset. In 1403 John Wadham bought the manor of Lustleigh on Dartmoor, which remained in the Wadham family for the next 200 years and six generations. In 1411 he acquired the manor of Redworthy in Ashreigney, which passed on his death to his son Thomas. He also acquired over 300 acres of land in Branscombe, Devon, the manor of Haydon, Dorset near Sherborne Castle, and lands in Blackmoor Vale, Dorset. In Gloucestershire, he and Joan Wadham held the manor of Sandhurst for their lives from William and Isabel Beaumont. Silverton descended from the Wadham to the Wyndham family and Silverton Park, a large neo-Classical mansion, was built there in 1839–45 by George Wyndham, 4th Earl of Egremont and demolished in 1901. Wadham's landholdings in Somerset were even more extensive than those in Devon and mostly consisted of properties forfeited by Sir John Cary, Chief Baron of the Exchequer who was attainted by the Merciless Parliament. These lands included Hardington Mandeville, a moiety of Chilton Cantelo, both near Yeovil, and premises in Trent (now in Dorset) which he purchased from the Crown jointly with Hankford in 1389 for 600 marks. Hankford's daughter Jane married Sir Robert Cary (died c. 1431), twelve times MP for Devon, Sir John Cary's son. These large landholdings in Somerset appear to have moved Wadham's principal interest away from Devon and Edge, and towards the end of his life he made his principal residence at Merryfield, Ilton, near Ilminster, Somerset, which he had purchased from Cecily Turberville. At Merryfield he built a substantial fortified Manor House, demolished after 1618 by Sir John Wyndham (1558-1645), of which only the rectangular moat survives today, still known locally as "Wadham's Castle", in the middle of agricultural land south of RAF Merryfield aerodrome. In May 1398 he was discharged from the bench "at his own request" and received a grant from the issues of Somerset and Dorset "for good service". He married twice. Firstly, according to his will, Maud (1.s) and then, in 1385, Joan Wrothesley, daughter of Sir William Wrottesley of Wrottesley Hall near Blore in Staffordshire and sister of Sir Hugh Wrottesley, a Founder Member and eighteenth knight of The Order of the Garter in 1348. Joan and John Wadham had eight children (five sons: Robert d.v.p; William, his heir; John; Walter, who went into the church; Thomas, later of Redworthy in Ashreigney; and three daughters Margery, Joan, and Elizabeth). Elizabeth is probably the 'Isabella' or 'Isabel' Wadham who married Sir Robert I Hill (Hylle, Hulle) of the ancient family de la Hill in the manor of Kilmington, near Axminster in Devon who, like his father-in-law, also became a Justice of the Common Pleas from 1409-1425. Sir Robert and Lady Hill retired to Shilston (see Shilston Barton, now Shilstone House) near Modbury, where their eldest son, Robert II Hill (c. 1392-1444), Sheriff of Devon in 1427, married Margaret Champernowne of Modbury (1396-1434) from whom, in time, descended Wills Hill, 1st Marquess of Downshire, Earl of Hillsborough. Margery Wadham married Sir John Stourton, 1st Baron Stourton (1400-1462), of Stourton and Stourhead, the son of Sir William de Stourton (c.1373-1413), Speaker of the House of Commons in 1413, the first year of the reign of King Henry V (1413-1422). Their daughter, Margaret Stourton, was grandmother to Jane Seymour, third wife of King Henry VIII and mother of King Edward VI, and Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, created 1st.Viscount Beauchamp of Hache on the marriage of Jane Seymour to the King in 1536, in honour of their de Beauchamp descent. Wadham left each of his children a hundred pounds (except Walter who, having chosen the church, received forty) with the proviso that "if my said infants die before they come of age or be promoted, the sum bequeathed to them shall be divided among my other infants". The 'inquisitio post mortem' valued his holdings at £115 p.a. Very little of this property had been acquired by inheritance or marriage; in fact most had been purchased piecemeal over the years starting in 1376 when he was still a young man. Interestingly, in his will dated March 12, 1411, as well as providing for his sister Cicely and her daughter, he also includes money to be expended on "prayers for the souls of ....Richard Brankescomb (and) Margaret (de Beauchamp) his wife, (as well as) Cicely Turberuill ...", who died at Merryfield in 1393. It seems possible that Sir Richard Branscombe of Edge, several times Sheriff of Devon in John Wadham's youth, and a man "well-learned in the laws of the land", could have taken an early interest in John's legal education and career and may have been, after his own marriage into the de Beauchamp family in 1353, the very person who introduced him to Cecily (St. Maur or Seymour, then Turberville; heiress of the de Beauchamps), which led to Wadham's life-long friendship with her, and to his purchase of Merryfield and other of her estates. Before his death, Sir John founded a chantry connected with the Church of St Mary, Ilminster dedicated to St. Katherine to which, according to his will, he gave land and houses at Desborough, Saltcombe (today Salcombe Regis), and Harberton in Devon, and at Aldington, Henstridge, and Stoke-under-Ham, now Stoke-sub-Hamdon, in Dorset. The estate of Stoke-sub-Hamdon in Tintinhull hundred had passed to the Beauchamps of Hatch, becoming known as Stoke Beauchamp, until in 1443 it was bought by the Duchy of Cornwall, which still own it today (2016). Two hundred years after the death of Sir John, the itinerant stone carvers and masons of Wadham College, Oxford came largely from the Somerset villages near Ham Hill of Stoke-sub-Hamdon and neighbouring Chiselborough which, by then, formed part of the estate of the co-founder, Nicholas II Wadham.

Sir William Wadham (c.1375-1452)

Sir William Wadham, son and heir of Merryfield and Edge, was Sheriff of Dorset in 1438 and Sheriff of Devon in 1442. His monumental brass (said by Rogers, in 1888, to depict him with his mother, Joan Wrottesley,) survives in the Church of St Mary, Ilminster, Somerset. It is among the best surviving brasses from the fifteenth century, and depicts him in complete plate armour exported to England by Milanese armourers; the finest of the period. His mother is wearing "widow's weeds". Sir William married Margaret Chiseldon, a daughter and co-heiress of John Chiseldon of Holcombe Rogus in Devon, Sheriff of Devon in 1406, who brought the Wadhams the manors of Penselwood near Stourton, Aunk, South Tawton, and Rewe, where his arms impaling his wife's may be seen carved on the pews at the Church of St Mary the Virgin. Margaret Chiseldon's sister Maude inherited the Manor of Holcombe Rogus and a moiety of the Penselwood estate. Sir William and Margaret Wadham had many children: John III Wadham, (their heir, b.1405); Elizabeth Wadham, who married Sir Robert Stawell of Cothelstone Manor, where the Stawells had lived since 1066: In 1453, towards the end of the Hundred Years War, Robert Stawell was taken prisoner at the Battle of Castillon, and a large ransom had to be found to secure his release. Elizabeth and Robert Stawell's descendants continued to live at Cothelstone until 1791. Their daughter Anne Stawell married in about 1440 John V Daunt of Wotton-under-Edge whose son John VI Daunt married Margery de Oulepenne, heiress of Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire; Joan Wadham (1431-1490), who was the first of three wives to Thomas Malet (d.1502), a family of great antiquity said to be descended from William Malet (companion of William the Conqueror), son of Hugh Malet Lord of Sutton (Sutton Manor, in Sutton Mallett) and Corypole (perhaps today's Curry Mallet) and of Enmore, Somerset, Deandon and St. Audries. Their second son, Sir Baldwin Malet, was Solicitor General to King Henry VIII from 1531-1533, and the Wadham arms impaling Malet can be seen in stained glass at St James Church, Iddesleigh; Ann Wadham, who married William Montacute of Henley Manor, near Crewkerne; Lawrence Wadham of Merifield who married Jane Hody, the second daughter of Sir William Hody of Pillesdon (now Pilsdon), and his wife Eleanor, daughter of Baldwin Mallet of Carypool (as above, possibly Curry Mallet), Somerset. Sir William Hody was Attorney General on the accession of King Henry VII (1485-1509) in 1485, Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 1486, and son of Sir John Hody, Chief Justice of the King's Bench; William Wadham, who married Jane, a daughter and co-heir of William Payne of Catherston Leweston, Dorset; Margaret Wadham, who married Gilbert Yarde of Bradley Manor, Newton Abbott; and James Wadham, the youngest, who in 1481 was sole patron of the living of Penselwood. The Penselwood estate stayed in the Wadham family until the death of Nicholas II Wadham in 1609. Sir William lies buried with his mother in a splendid altar tomb at the Church of St Mary, Ilminster, in the transept traditionally known as 'the Wadham aisle', built in spectacular Perpendicular English Gothic style from the local Hamstone, of which there is every reason to believe he was the builder.

Sir John III Wadham(1405-1476)

Sir John III Wadham of Merifield and Edge, the eldest son and heir, added to the family possessions when he married Elizabeth Popham, early in the fifteenth century, a daughter and co-heiress of Sir Stephen Popham (c. 1386 – 1444) of Popham, Hampshire, who was five times MP for Hampshire, and commanded on the right wing of Henry V's army at Agincourt in 1415. Another branch of the Popham family was seated at Huntworth, Somerset. (See Sir John Popham (c. 1531 – 1607), Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chief Justice of England). Among the many possessions the Wadhams inherited from the Pophams were the manor of Pole Anthony, Tiverton (which the Pophams in turn inherited from the Reade, or Rede, family), and the manors of Avington or Carisbrooke Castle, Fairlee and Shide, on the Isle of Wight, where the Pophams were great landowners. These descended to the Pophams via the St Martin family who had possessed them since the reign of Edward I. The Popham inheritance also brought with it more land around Merryfield at Ilton. A brother of Sir John, William Wadham, inherited the manor of Anke, (now, Aunk) through his mother, and married Jane, daughter and co-heiress of William Payne of Catherston Leweston, Dorset, establishing the Catherston branch of the Wadham family, one of whom, John Wadham of Catherston (1520-1584), was Captain of Sandsfoot Castle by Weymouth (from 1550 until his death), Recorder of Lyme Regis, MP for Melcombe Regis in 1553, and Weymouth in 1554. He is buried at Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset and his will mentions three sons (George, John, and Nicholas), and two daughters. On the eve of a planned pilgrimage to the Holy Land, two years after the devastating Wars of the Roses had ended in the triumph of Edward of York, King Edward IV (1461-1470) and then again (1471-1483), Sir John Wadham made his will, dated 6 August 1473. He had three sons (John, William and Edward) and four daughters (Margery, Jane, Margaret, and Elizabeth). A Margaret Wadham, widow, whose will is proved March 23, 1518, leaves her second son Guy Bonvyll (Bonville) "my manor at Lambroke" (today, East Lambrook Manor), and an Elizabeth Wadham (b.1425) married, as his second wife, John Fauntleroy of Fauntleroy's Marsh manor, Alveston, near Sherborne, Devon. Sir John's brother, William Wadham of Catherston, was one of his executors and his will is proved 1476.

Sir John IV Wadham (d.1502)

Sir John IV Wadham, the eldest son and heir of Merifield and Edge from 1476, first married a daughter of John I Cheyne of Pine (Pyne or Pinhoe), Sheriff of Devon in 1444, and then Elizabeth Stucley, a daughter of Sir Hugh I Stucley of Affeton Castle, Sheriff of Devon in 1449, and his wife Katherine (or Catherine) de Affeton (d. 1467), only daughter and heir of John Affeton of the Manor of Affeton. Sir Nicholas I Wadham (c.1472-1542), was their son and heir. Sir John IV Wadham's sister Alice Wadham married Sir Nicholas Stucley (born 1451), eldest son and heir of Sir Hugh I Stucley (1398/1414-c.1457). Nicholas Stucley and Alice Wadham's son and heir, Sir Thomas Stucley (1473-1542), first cousin of Sir Nicholas I Wadham (c.1472-1542), was Sheriff of Devon in 1521 and married Anne Wode (or Wood), daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Wode of Childrey and Bingley (or, according to Pole, "Wood of Binley"), MP for Wallingford in 1478 and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1500 to 1502, when he died. Sir John IV Wadham's brother, Sir Edward Wadham of Pole Anthony, Tiverton, and of Tomarton, Gloucestershire, was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset (1502) and Sheriff of Gloucestershire (1524,1530, and 1540), and Esquire of the Body at the funeral of King Henry VII (1485-1509), in 1509. A Thomas Wadham is also mentioned as having been an Esquire of the Body in this period. Sir Edward Wadham's will is dated 1547. On his death, Pole Anthony reverted to the main branch of the Wadham family, whilst the old manor of Tomarton, Gloucestershire reverted to Sir John St. Loe (1500-1559) of Sutton Court, Sheriff of Somerset, MP and friend of John Locke. Until the 1540s a considerable part of the St. Loe patrimony remained with Sir Edward Wadham, who had married the widow of St. Loe's grandfather. Sir John Wadham's will, dated 20 March 1501, leaves the bulk of his estate to his son Nicholas, including "the manor of Alvyngton, Venicott, and Braden", pays for "glasynge of a paene of new werke in Mowntegew" (probably Montacute, where the Wadham armorials are still to be seen in stained glass in the Library at Montacute House, then home of the Phelips family; although the present house, like Wadham College, Cranborne Manor and parts of Dunster Castle, is thought to be the work of the mason-architect William Arnold, and is Elizabethan), and mentions a legacy of £20 a year "to go to the exhibicion of my daughter Alianour in sum house of Religion of women, with a woman to waite on her". He asks that he be buried in the tomb of his grandfather Sir William at the Church of St Mary, Ilminster. The will of a John Wadham of Merifield in co. Somerset, Clerk, written in 1503 and proved at Lambeth, on July 12, 1505, is of some interest in that he wills "that the residue of my goods be disposed for the contention of the debts of Sir John Wadham, Knt., formerly my master, and of his wife, both deceased."

Sir Nicholas I Wadham (c.1472-1542)

Sir Nicholas I Wadham was from 1502, heir to Merryfield and Edge, and MP for Somerset in 1529. He married four times. By his first wife Joan Hill, daughter of Robert III Hill of Houndstone and Alice Stourton (widow of Sir William Daubeny, mother of Sir Giles Daubeney, 1st Baron Daubeney, daughter of John Stourton (died 1438) of Preston Plucknett and Brympton d'Evercy) he had five sons and two daughters: Laurence Wadham who died childless at the manor of Houghton, near Bigbury, Devon in 1522; Nicholas Wadham, married to Dorothy Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, who also died without progeny; Giles Wadham of Barton, today Barton St David, Somerset, who "being on lyfe at Deiesse" (...living for Godliness ?) was left his father's best horse, lived at the rectory in Barton St David, married Agnes Clauson (Clausen/Clausey) of Barton and had a son Edward Wadham of Meare and a daughter, Dorothy Wadham, who married Hugh Worth of the manor of Worthe, in the parish of Washfield near Tiverton, Devon. Edward Wadham is mentioned in the muster lists for 1569: "Edward Wadham, gent, two corslets furnished, and a gelding for a light horseman furnished". He married twice: Margaret Young, one of the two daughters of Sir John Young by Joan Wadham who had first married Sir Giles Strangways, and who was therefore his first cousin once removed, and Alice Carew born in Devon, the Alice Wadham of Foscott or Foxcote, Somerset near Hardington Bampfylde, who died in 1620. The rectory at Meare, appropriated to Glastonbury in 1332 "and charged with a vicarage in 1351" was let by the Crown during the sixteenth century to tenants including Edward Wadham who was resident in the 1580s until his death in 1614. A "fair house" adjoining the churchyard in the sixteenth century may have been the rectory house. It had five chambers and a chapel, but was one of the parsonage houses said to be decayed by 1618 and not recorded again. Edward Wadham's close neighbour at the manor and Manor Farmhouse, Meare from 1582 was his distant kinsman Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford; Andrew Wadham who, in 1544, was "one of the Gentlemen Ushers of the Queen's grace": the Queen in question being Catherine Parr who, on the death of Henry VIII (1509-1547) married Sir Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, another distant kinsman of the Wadhams (see the Wadham/Stourton connection under Sir John II Wadham above), and a first cousin of Andrew Wadham's half-sisters, Jane and Katherine Wadham (see below). The Seymour connection also doubtless explains why from 1540 Andrew Wadham was in charge of Sharpham Park on behalf of the Crown after the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey, as it became the property of another relative, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the earl of Hertford's father. Andrew Wadham married, as her fourth husband, Anne Saunders (1512-1565), formerly Lady Longueville, daughter of Lawrence Saunders (1480-1555) of Harrington, Northamptonshire, who appears in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and "who was burnt for testimony of the gospel in the Little Park within the city of Coventry, 2 and 3 Philip and Mary": Queen Mary I (1553-1558). Together with Bartholomew Tate, her son by her second husband Sir Bartholomew Tate of Laxton, Northants, they bought the former nunnery of Delapré Abbey in 1548 (the Abbey of St. Mary de la Pré in Northamptonshire), but had no children before Andrew Wadham died in 1550; Mary Wadham married Sir Richard Chudleigh of Ashton, who died in 1558 having had issue; and Elizabeth Wadham, who married firstly, Sir Edward Bampfield (today spelled Bampfylde) of the Manor of Poltimore. Their son and heir, Richard Bampfield (1526-1594), who was an only child and only two years old at his father's death, was presumably the hero of a sensational story which has been handed down to us by Prince "in a memorable passage of undoubted credit" to the effect that "one of the heirs of the house, not many generations back," being ward to "some very great person in the East country," was taken away in his infancy, and brought up in ignorance of his real position and prospects. He was trained to be a servant, and, when discovered by one of his late father's tenantry, was employed as a huntsman in his said guardian's establishment. The Poltimore farmer is then said to have abducted him, to have taken him before the proper authorities, and to have duly established the right of his young landlord to his inheritance. This Richard Bampfield, at the age of fifty became Sheriff of Devon in 1576, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603). His mother Elizabeth Wadham, a widow at the time of her second marriage to John Warre of Chipleigh (Chipley Park, Somerset) second son of Sir Richard Warre of Hestercombe and his wife Joan Hody, daughter of Sir William Hody of Pillesdon, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1486-1513) was a daughter of Nicholas Wadham of Merrifield, co. Somerset. They went on to have children. Richard Bampfield's wife was a daughter of Sir John Sydenham of the same county, and they also had issue. Sir Nicholas Wadham's eldest surviving son and heir was John V Wadham. Sir Nicholas Wadham was Sheriff of Devon (1501) and (1514), Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset (1498) and (1534), and Sheriff of Wiltshire (1516). In 1503 he was Esquire of the Body to King Henry VII (1485-1509), and Knighted in 1504 "at ye creacion of Prince Henry", then thirteen years of age. He was Captain of the Isle of Wight at Carisbrooke Castle from 1509 to 1520, (where his arms are carved on the governor's house), one of the Commission in 1512 for fitting out at Southampton the abortive expedition under Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset to aid Ferdinand of Aragon in his invasion of France, Vice Admiral to Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, High Admiral of England, from 1522–23, and Knight of the Shire for Somerset during the Reformation Parliament, 1529-34. In 1524 he was granted a patent, licensing him to make a park at Merifield of 200 acres of pasture and 40 acres of woodland. In 1530 he was appointed one of the Commissioners for making inquisition into the estates of Cardinal Wolsey. His second wife Margaret Seymour, a cousin (see Wadham/Stourton connection under John II Wadham above), was a sister of Sir John Seymour of Wulfhall (1474-1536), and aunt of Queen Jane Seymour (m.1536; mother of King Edward VI; died 1537) and Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset ("Protector Somerset"), and is buried in St. Mary's Church, Carisbrooke. Margaret Seymour had three children by Sir Nicholas; another Nicholas, who died as a baby (in 1508) and whose monumental chrysom brass is in St Peter's church, Ilton near Merryfield, (where he lies buried beneath the arms of Wadham and the angel wings of Seymour), and Katherine and Jane Wadham (first cousins to King Edward VI (1547-1553), Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and to Elizabeth Seymour who married Gregory Cromwell, son to Thomas Cromwell). Both the Wadham sisters were nuns at Romsey Abbey in Hampshire. According to a disposition she made in 1541, Jane Wadham had been a reluctant nun and ".... having both in public and in private always protested against this seclusion, she conceived herself free from regular observance, and in that persuasion joined herself in matrimony with one John Foster 'per verba de presenti' intending to have the marriage solemnised as soon as she was free from her religion..." This John Foster had been chaplain and receiver at the abbey from where he had spied for both Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas Seymour. He also wrote a grovelling letter to Cromwell after the surrender of the abbey and his marriage; his concern was not that his wife might still be bound by her oath of celibacy, but that he as a priest had married believing that to be possible "but now by the noise of the people I perceive I have done amiss" and as soon as he realised that clerical marriage was against the king's wishes "I sent the woman to her friends three score miles from me". He may have done so, but his new wife showed a fighting rather than a submissive spirit. Jane Wadham petitioned the king, and in 1541 he ordered the bishops of Durham, Rochester and Westminster and the Attorney General, Sir William Whorwood, to hold a commission of inquiry into the marriage with the authority to pronounce it valid if they found it to be so. Presumably they did so pronounce because the couple were later living with their children in Baddesley, where John Foster was the incumbent in 1543. Six years later the Court of Augmentations granted him the manor of Baddesley which had belonged to the Hospitallers. As he was also receiving £51 2s 0d. a year in fees and annuities out of Romsey in 1553 the couple had a comfortable income. The Fosters had three children one of whom, Jane Foster, married William Fleming son of the MP Sir Francis Fleming (1502-1558), who bought Broadlands in 1547 from Sir Thomas Seymour, to whom it had been granted from the spoils of the dissolved Romsey Abbey by King Edward VI, his nephew. From William and Jane Fleming Broadlands eventually descended through their daughter Frances Fleming to the de St Barbe family, and is currently (2016) the home of Lord Romsey, Norton Knatchbull, 8th Baron Brabourne. Thomas Cromwell took another of Wadham's sons into his household (and eventually replaced Sir Nicholas as Governor of the Isle of Wight from 1538-1540). In 1520 Sir Nicholas attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold with King Henry VIII (1509-1547), his cousin and brother-in-law Sir John Seymour (1474-1536), and his uncle Sir Edward Wadham. In the same year, his brother William Wadham was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. In May 1521, at Bristol, both Sir Nicholas and Sir Edward Wadham were jurors at the indictment for treason of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. In 1524 Sir Nicholas received an honoury admission to the Middle Temple. He was married thirdly to Isabel Baynham, daughter of Thomas Baynham of Clearwell, Gloucestershire, widow of Sir Giles Brydges of Coberley (d.1511), and finally, to Joan Lyte of Lytes Cary (d.Aug 20th 1557), widow of William Walton of Barton St. David, Somerset by whom she had five sons and two daughters. One of her daughters Elizabeth (sometimes called Isabel) married Christopher Cheverell, heir 'to the house of Chauntmarell', today Chantmarle Manor, Dorset. Dame Joan, Lady Wadham, who died in 1557, is buried and commemorated in the Church of St. Peter, Ilton. There were no children by his third and fourth marriages.

John V Wadham (before 1531-1578)

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Mural monument to Joan Tregarthin (died 1583) widow successively of John Kelloway and John V Wadham (died 1578) of Merifield, Ilton, Somerset and Edge, Branscombe. North transept, Branscombe Church, Devon

John V Wadham, son to Sir Nicholas by his first marriage, who continued the main line of the family at Merifield and Edge from 1542, was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset in 1556, and is chiefly remembered for having been the father of Nicholas Wadham (1532-1609), co-founder of Wadham College, Oxford and for the surviving mural monument to his wife in Saint Winifred's Church, Branscombe, Devon on which appears his effigy and armorials. His wife, Joan Tregarthen, was a daughter and co-heiress of John Tregarthen of Cornwall and widow of John Kelloway of Cullompton by whom she had fifteen children. She brought John Wadham a considerable fortune, and some dignity, for she claimed royal descent from the Plantagenets on both sides. Her children by both marriages and both husbands appear with her on her funeral monument in Branscombe church. John Wadham died in 1578, and was buried in Ilminster, where, however, no monument to his memory exists. His widow retired to Edge, which seems to have become the dower house of the family, where she died in 1583. She lies buried in Saint Winifred's Church, Branscombe, Devon.

Nicholas II Wadham (1532-1609)

Nicholas II Wadham (1532-1609), their only surviving son and heir, of Merifield and Edge was co-founder with his wife Dorothy Wadham of the college that bears their name, and was the last male descendant in direct succession of the main line of the Wadhams. He was born in 1532, and according to all accounts was educated at Oxford. He is probably the same 'Nicholas Wadham, of Brimpton, Somerset,' who entered himself at the Inner Temple on March 9, 1552, for although Brimpton never belonged to the Wadhams, Alvington in the same parish did, and the Sydenhams at Brimpton (Brympton d'Evercy) were close neighbours and related by marriage. A direct ancestor, Richard de Sydenham, had been raised to the bench as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas at the same time as Sir John II Wadham in 1388. In 1555, at the age of twenty-three at St Botolph's Aldgate, Nicholas married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Petre, of Ingatestone Hall and Writtle in Essex, a statesman "who, by carefully trimming his sails to the stormy politics of the age, contrived to retain the confidence and remain a privy councillor of monarchs so diverse as Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I. For his zeal when acting under Cromwell in the suppression of the monasteries he was rewarded by a knighthood, a seat in the Privy Council, made Secretary of State, and more substantially by the grant of a great estate in abbey lands amounting to twelve manors and four rectories (in Devon alone, he is thought to have owned over 36,000 acres). On the restoration of the Romish religion by Queen Mary he was uniquely careful to secure his spoils by a Papal Bull which he obtained from Pope Paul IV in 1555, professing that he was ready to employ his possessions for spiritual uses. The accession of Elizabeth no doubt relieved him from this obligation, and it does not appear that beyond eight fellowships which he founded at Exeter College in 1566, and some unimportant charities in Essex, any of his wealth was diverted to spiritual or charitable purposes." Nicholas and Dorothy seem to have retired early on to lead a country life at Merifield where they lived with Nicholas's father. A curious letter was written to them at this time by Sir Amias Paulet, the ambassador to France, and the Puritan custodian in later times of Mary Stuart: "My good brother....I pray you commend me most heartily to my good father Wadham and tell him I trust to be so happy to see him again in Merryfield. My like commendations may not be forgotten to my good sister your wife....My sister must look to hear many strange stories from my wife if God give her leave to see England again, and in this meantime she desireth to be most heartily commended to her father, brother, and sister at Merryfield. And thus I comit you, my good brother, to the merciful tuition of the Almighty. From Tours." The Wadhams were famous for the splendid hospitality they kept at Merryfield. "His hospital house" writes Thomas Fuller, "was an Inn at all times, a Court at Christmas"; and in the papers relating to his foundation are mentioned numerous gentlemen, his 'servants', some of whom were related to him by blood and no doubt served as pages in his retinue. His means were large, his estates being valued at £3000 a year, and the Wadhams were able to save £14,000 that, invested in land and other revenues, brought in a further income of £800 a year. In 1585 Nicholas Wadham was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. The Wadhams died without progeny. Accordingly, Nicholas determined to spend on charitable purposes. In 1606 he founded almshouses for eight poor people at Ilton, but the bulk of his savings was to be devoted to education. His original idea is said to have been to establish a college at Venice for the education of English Roman Catholics, but this is inconsistent with the Anglican tone of his statutes for the foundation; although Dorothy, like her brother Sir John Petre, 1st Baron Petre patron of the composer William Byrd, probably remained a Catholic, and was suspected of being a recusant. Along with Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester (another of Byrd's patrons) and other notables, Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham attended a two-week Christmas house party at the Petre's family home Ingatestone Hall in 1589-90 with William Byrd following the death of one of Lord Petre's children, and it is probable that his music would have been played at their funerals. Their portraits, painted in 1595, hang in the warden's lodgings at Wadham College, Oxford. Dorothy has the distinction of being the first woman who was not a member of the Royal Family or titled aristocracy to found a college at Oxford or Cambridge. The residue of Nicholas's estates, in default of any male issue, passed to the heirs of his father, that is to his three sisters and their descendants:

• • Joan Wadham, who in Oct/Nov 1546 married Sir Giles Strangways (1528–1562), of Melbury House, Melbury Sampford, Dorset, five times MP for Dorset in 1553, 1554, 1555, 1558 and 1559, was ancestor to the Fox-Strangways, Earls of Ilchester. Joan Wadham, Lady Strangways, died in 1603 and lies buried in Bristol Cathedral with her second husband Sir John Young (c.1519-1589), builder in 1568 of the Great House in Bristol, where Queen Elizabeth I stayed in 1574 on her visit, of which only the Red Lodge (finished by Joan Wadham in 1590) survives today as the Red Lodge Museum, Bristol. The arms of Young impaling Wadham are above the oak entrance porch to The Great Oak Room.
  • Margaret Wadham, wife of Nicholas Martin or Martyn (c.1550-1595) of Athelhampton, Dorset. The couple's monumental brass, showing them kneeling beneath an escutcheon with the ancient arms of FitzMartin (Argent, two bars gules) impaling Wadham, survives in St Mary's Church, Puddletown, Dorset, (as do their combined armorials in fine stained glass at Athelhampton). Nicholas Martyn, in full armour, kneels bare-headed before an altar on which is an open book. His three sons, who all predeceased him, kneel behind him. To the right is his wife Margaret Wadham, behind whom kneel their seven daughters, of whom four survived as co-heiresses.
  • Florence Wadham, who died 1596, was wife to Sir John Wyndham (died 1572) of Orchard Wyndham, in Somerset, and mother of Sir John Wyndham (1558–1645), ancestor of the Wyndham Earls of Egremont of Petworth House in Sussex. Her fame rests on a remarkable escape from a horrific death and her singular importance to the survival of the Wyndham family. She and Sir John are buried in the Wyndham aisle of the Church of St Decuman, Watchet.

Wyndham/Fox-Strangways

Arms of Wyndham: Azure, a chevron between three lion's heads erased or

Following the death of Dorothy Wadham in 1618, Edge passed into the families of the sisters and co-heiresses of Nicholas Wadham; namely, the Wyndham family of Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, later Earls of Egremont at Petworth House in Sussex, and the Fox-Strangways of Melbury House, Dorset, later Earls of Ilchester, who retained ownership until 1933 and in the interval let Edge to a series of tenant farmers. The Wyndhams of Orchard Wyndham owned the manor of Wadham until the twentieth century, and still retain ownership of the Wadham's Merryfield estate and the manor of Ilton today (2016).

Langdon

Edge was at some time occupied by the Langdons of Chard in Somerset. Edge was described in the eighteenth-century as 'derelict'.

Richards

It was occupied in the early twentieth century by Mr. Richards of Sidmouth, who was born in Branscombe.

Masters

It was purchased in 1933 by Captain Frank Masters, an architect, when in a decayed state with the former chapel being used as a dairy. He began extensive renovations in 1935, but did not live to complete the work.

Blackburn

The renovations begun by Masters were completed by Robert Blackburn, an aeronautical engineer.

Robinson

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Dorothy Wadham's bedroom, Edge Barton, in which the Warden of Wadham College stayed overnight in June 2010

In 1996 Edge was acquired by retired businessman (Michael) Silvan(us) Robinson CBE, and his wife June, (née Wood), a former Conservative mayor of London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Before 1988 he was President of the Shell International Trading Company, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. He was awarded CBE in the 1988 New Year Honours. The Robinsons established a link with Wadham College and in June 2010, to mark the 400th anniversary of the College's foundation, they entertained at Edge Sir Neil Chalmers, Warden of Wadham College, and a number of Fellows of the College. The Warden and his wife stayed the night at Edge in Dorothy Wadham's bedroom. Mr Robinson stated: "Dororthy Wadham is quite a cult figure at the College and our visitors were delighted to see where she'd come from".

Further reading

• Clifford, H. Dalton, "A Manor House Restored", Country Life Magazine, August 30, 1962
• Thomas Graham Jackson, Wadham College, Oxford, its Foundation, Architecture and History, with an Account of the Family of Wadham and their Seats in Somerset and Devon, Oxford, 1893

Sources

• Rogers, William Henry Hamilton, Memorials of the West, Historical and Descriptive, Collected on the Borderland of Somerset, Dorset and Devon, Exeter, 1888, pp. 147–173, The Founder and Foundress of Wadham]
• Branscombe Parish: Some Notable Houses (www.branscombe.net)