25. AYSHFORD-BOTES

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Fay Sampson’s Family History

This site is a work-in-progress. There is a massive amount to cover. I have included both male and female lines, and some go back 30 generations. Keep coming back for more.
I have numbered the generations working backwards from my own as (1)

SIMON AYSHFORD and SARAH BOTES (25)[1]

 

SIMON AYSHFORD was the second son of John and Sapienca Ayshford of Ayshford in Burlescombe. Since he was not expected to inherit the Ayshford estates, his father arranged a marriage for him to the daughter and heir of a neighbour.

 

SARAH BOTES was the daughter and heir of William Botes. “The Botes family had held various estates at the time of Domesday and Sarah would come with her father’s blessing and the lands at Legh in Burlescombe which adjoined Westleigh, already held by the Ayshfords, and Canonsleigh.”

 

The couple had a son John around 1270.

 

Simon ‘s older brother John married, but he died childless before their father. So when John senior died around 1283, Simon inherited the Ayshford lands, to add to the estates Sarah had brought to the marriage.

The Ayshfords were consolidating and extending their holdings around this village near the Somerset border. They were gradually rising from yeomen farmers to a higher social standing.

Their modest house of Ayshford Court had its own chapel. It would have originated as a chapel of ease.

The 13th century, under Henry III and Edward I, was a time of prosperity, with an extension of farming in Devon.

It was also a time of national prejudice. The Jews were expelled from England in 1290. There were wars to subjugate Wales, which succeeded, and Scotland, which did not.

 

John died before 1306.

 

[1]  F. & H. Ayshford, Notes Towards a History of the Ayshford Family of Devon. Typescript booklet.

 

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