Thomas ap Adam (1305 - 1349)

Born 1305 in Charlton Adam, Somerset, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 1349 at about age 44 in Ashchurch, Gloucestershire, England

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Biography

Thomas was born in 1305 and died about 1349 from The Black Plague along with many members of his family on the Inge and Basset sides.

1315 heavy rain ruins harvest: widespread famine. Thomas, the ward is about 10 years old.

1324 Thomas ap Adam, Baron John's heir is of age, becomes known as Sir Thomas.

1325 Official seisin of Thomas's lands granted 4 Jul 1325 and on 25th he grants his manor of Monewden in Suffolk to Lady Isabella de Hastings his wardship 'mother'. Thomas demises manor of Purton to John de Walton.

1326 Sir Thomas ap Adam, perhaps taking advantage of the power shift, complains in Chancery that his castle of Beverstone had been broken into and wrecked and that 70 charters had been stolen. Beverstone is close to Berkeley and hence vulnerable to the ups and downs of the battle between the barons and the King and his favourites.

It was Hugh de Gurney of East Harptree who held lands in Beverstone from Thomas ap Adam, lord of Beverstone. Berkeley Castle mun. general charters 2683, 2729 These are dated 1329. Gurney, Record, pp. 637–8, shows that Thomas Gurney of East Harptree was Thomas ap Adam’s steward. According to him ap Adam alienated Beverstone and other property to Berkeley.

Sir Thomas ap Adam acknowledges £100 owed to Miles de Rodbergh (£45,000 in 2010). 'for settlement of divers disputes' over land Thomas executes a complex deed with Sir Thomas de Gurney son of Hugh, which appears to give more to de Gurney than Thomas gets in return, so there may have been more debts here.Similar acknowledgement to Sir John Inge for £700 to whom, before or after this, in the same year he demised lands inherited from his grandmother, Joan de Knoville at Penyard and La Lee in the Forest of Dean. This grant may also be a marriage settlement for his son Thomas le Fitz who later married a daughter (step?) of John Inge. Total debts recorded here amount to equivalent of about £360,000 at today's prices.

1328 Thomas grants Manor of Purton by Lydney to William de Cheltenham.

Thomas ap Adam, Lord of Beverstone, grants lands and tenements in Tickenham, Somerset to sons. Thomas ap Adam and Fulk ap Adam. Presumed illegitimate sons. Thomas senior is only about 24 so these are children.

1329 Thomas executes a complex deed with Sir Thomas de Gurney son of Hugh, which appears to give more to de Gurney than Thomas gets in return, so there may have been more debts here. Sir Thomas Adam sold Penyard Regis on June 20, 1329

1330 In this year Sir Thomas (III), Lord Berkeley buys Thomas ap Adam's major holdings, the 'manors of Barewe (Barrow Gurney) Beverston and all the lordships he has in counties of Gloucester and Somerset and later the same year reversion of Monewden, Suffolk.

Chancery records show Sir Thomas ap Adam complaining further that his wife (Jane Inge) was stolen away from him and goods stolen by Thomas de Gurney son of Hugh and others and still withhold his wife.

Thomas (III) Lord Berkeley grants Beachley estate and ferry back to Thomas ap Adam at rent of 10 marks p.a. A mark is two-thirds of a pound i.e. 160d and 10 marks (£6 13s 4d) nowadays about £3,000 which seems a generous grant and is permanent to Thomas's heir.

1334 Thomas ap Adam's arms appear on an Ashmole Roll. (Bodlein MS Ash Rolls 19)

1349 Black Death in England and Wales, kills about a quarter of the population of Wales. Rents from Lordship of Abergavenny down two-thirds. This may account for all the deaths in the Inge and Basset families and of Thomas ap Adam and his wife.

1375 John ap Adam a younger son of Sir Thomas ap Adam as eventual heir to his father confirms sale by his father of Beverston, Over and Barrow Gurney releasing any rights to Katherine de Berkeley, Lady of Wotton and John de Berkeley and their heirs, remainder to Thomas de Berkeley. In the same year we have the earliest known record so far, of an William ap Adam holding land in Hereford City, in Guldforde Street and Hugh de Rodebergh quitclaims manor of Cerncote from a life interest presumably the end of the debt settlement from 46 years ago

Archaeologia Cambrensis" VOL. I. SIXTH SERIES. 1901, in an article on the Jenkins family by H. F. J. Vaughn. Vaughn thought Alice and Elizabeth might have been one person, and more generally he mentions several versions of the family story thinking the pedigrees might contain confusions.

Banks, in his Baronies in Fee, says that Thomas had posterity that continued long after, dropping the Ap from the name.^[1]

But Daniel Gurney's Record of the House of Gurney says that "Thomas Ap-Adam married Johanna Basset, and that he died without issue is shewn by the rest of the fiefs of his mother Elizabeth reverting to the other branches of the family of Gournay" (the family of Thomas's mother.^[2]

The Retrospective Review of 1827 says that Thomas at least had a son named John, and he associates the family with a later John ap Adam, who died 1439-40, leaving Hemley to John Huntley the son of his sister Elizabeth.^[3] Ormerod also registered the evidence for the son of Thomas.^[4]

The Victoria County history for Gloucestershire seems to be clear enough, but implies that yet another daughter of Thomas married another Huntley:

"Thomas ap Adam came of age c. 1324 and by 1343 Beachley manor had passed to his son Robert; Robert may have been succeeded by his brothers Hamon and John who like him apparently died without surviving issue. Robert's sister Alice married Thomlyn Huntley and their son John ap Thomlyn Huntley held Beachley manor in 1425. (Glos. R.O., D 674A/T 240.) John ap Thomlyn was lord of the manor in 1448 and he or another John ap Thomlyn in 1499. Margaret, one of the daughters and heiresses of John ap Thomlyn, married Edmund ap Gwylym ap Hopkin, and their son William Edmunds was lord of Beachley in 1535. (Ibid. D 262/T 6.) In 1575 Thomas Williams alias Edmunds sold the manor to John Symings, (C.P. 25(2)/142/1822/29.) a London physician, who sold it in 1580 to William Lewis. (Glos. R.O., D 726/3, f. 51.)"^[5]

A pedigree for this family also exists on pages 218 and 219 of Volume 3, Part 2 of Bradney's History of Monmouthshire. He gives Thomas's wife's name as Margaret, and agrees in tracing the line down to a John Huntley. He adds pedigree information tracing the ap Adam line back to Iorwerth ap Caradog, steward to Iorwerth ap Owen.^[6][7]

Critical of the Welsh genealogies, and naming the father of John ap Adam as Reynold is the first edition of Complete Peerage. It reports:

"Sir Thomas ap Adam, having proved his age, did homage and had livery of his lands, 4 July 1325. Immediately afterwards, he began a series of alienations, to different persons, of his extensive property. He m. 1stly, Margery, who was living 13 Oct. 1331. He m. 2ndly, before 1341, Joan, da. of Sir John Inge, of Corton Denham, Somerset, by Alice Basset, his wife. She d, s.p., before 9 July 1349. He d. before 1342-43, leaving 3 sons, Robert, Hamund, and John. The two elder of these were living in 1342-43, and d. s.p. The 1st., John, living 28 May 1375, was father of John ap Adam, who, together with Margaret, his wife, sold the manor of Sharncote, Wilts, to Thomas, Lord of Berkeley, in (1414-15) 2 Hen. V. He d. s.p., 20 Nov. 1424, leaving John Huntley, s. of his sister, Elizabeth, his h., among whose representatives any hereditary Barony, that may be held to have existed, is in abeyance."^[8]

Yet another discussion of this family is found in "Archaeologia Cambrensis" VOL. I. SIXTH SERIES. 1901, in an article on the Jenkins family by H. F. J. Vaughn. Vaughn thought Alice and Elizabeth might have been one person, and more generally he mentions several versions of the family story thinking the pedigrees might contain confusions.^[9]

A handy summary is found in "Dursley and its Neighbourhood" by John Henry Blunt (1877):

"Thomas Lord Ap Adam, his young son, thus came to his inheritance at eight years of age. He was either very unfortunate or very improvident, for his great estates began to pass away from him as soon as he had reached the age when they would be under his control. Before he had attained his twenty-sixth year Beverston was almost his only manor. Nor could his domestic relations within the bounds of his narrowed property have been felicitous, for it is recorded that he had a wife named Margaret, and that in 1332 he found it necessary to bring a suit in Chancery against Thomas, son and heir of Hugh de Gournay, for stealing the lady away from Beverston, together with divers goods and chattels. About the same time that he thus lost his lady Sir Thomas Ap Adam also lost the last of his patrimonial Manors, for he sold Beverston to Thomas, eighth Baron Berkeley; having thus wrecked a noble inheritance before he had reached the thirtieth year of his age, and being forced to retire to a small estate which yet remained to him in Monmouthshire."^[10]

The pedigree Blunt gives also follows mentions another line of descendants, because he says that the above-mentioned Margaret, who married Edmund ap Gwylym ap Hopkin, also had a sister named Mary, who married Thomas Parker of Monmouthshire, from whom descends the Powells of Llanllowell, near Uske in Monmouthshire.

NOTE: The pedigree of Blunt disagrees with the pedigree of the Complete Peerage and the one in Bradney, because it combines two generations of John ap Adam and makes Thomas ap Adam the father of the Elizabeth who married John Huntley. Ormerod, apparently not used by CP, gives good reason to accept only one generation of John ap Adam (also questioning the evidence that the sister was named Elizabeth), but he believed that his nephew and heir John ap Thomlyn Huntley did have a son with the same name as himself.^[11]

Sources

1. ↑ https://books.google.be/books?id=670sAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA106
2. ↑ The record of the house of Gournay. [With], Volumes 2-4 by Daniel Gurney https://books.google.be/books?id=dlUBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA636 and https://archive.org/stream/recordofhouseofg04gurn#page/n111/mode/2up
3. ↑ https://books.google.be/books?id=c34qAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA299
4. ↑ https://books.google.be/books?id=AA4HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA105
5. ↑ Kathleen Morgan and Brian S Smith, 'Tidenham including Lancaut: Manors and other estates', in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 10, Westbury and Whitstone Hundreds, ed. C R Elrington, N M Herbert and R B Pugh (London, 1972), pp. 62-68 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol10/pp62-68 [accessed 30 September 2015].
6. ↑ https://books.google.be/books?id=MIlnAAAAMAAJ
7. ↑ https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE88012&from=fhd
8. ↑ G.E. Cokayne; with Vicary Gibbs, H.A. Doubleday, Geoffrey H. White, Duncan Warrand and Lord Howard de Walden, editors, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13 volumes in 14 (1910-1959; reprint in 6 volumes, Gloucester, U.K.: Alan Sutton Publishing, 2000), volume I, page 179. https://archive.org/stream/completepeerageo01coka#page/178/mode/2up
9. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/archaeologiacam21moorgoog#page/n290/mode/2up
10. ↑ https://archive.org/stream/dursleyanditsne00blungoog#page/n132/mode/2up
11. ↑ https://books.google.be/books?redir_esc=y&id=AA4HAAAAQAAJ

Americans of Royal Descent: A Collection of Genealogies of American Families

A Genealogical Register of the Inhabitants and History of the Towns of Sherborn and Holliston....... to be continued.....

Strigulensia: Archæological Memoirs Relating to the District Adjacent to the Confluence of the Severn and the Wye,George Ormerod, T. Richards, 1861

The genealogy of the descendants of several ancient Puritans by Morse Abner, 1793-1865; McCabe, Clara J; McCabe, Dorothy

The New England Historical and Genealogical Register,: Volume 7 1853, New England Historic Genealogical Society Staff Heritage Books, 1992

The New England Historical & Genealogical Register and Antiquarian Journal, Volume 7, Volumes 1055-1056 of American periodical series, 1800-1850

Castles in Medieval Society: Fortresses in England, France, and Ireland in the Central Middle Ages, Charles Coulson Oxford University Press, 2004 - Architecture, pg197