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)
WILLIAM DE LA HEALE (22)
WILLIAM DE LA HEALE. In the early 15th century, the heiress Alice de la Hele married William Fraunceis. She was the daughter of Nicholas de la Hele and the granddaughter of William.
William de la Heale was the seventh in a succession of lords of the manor of Hele in East Devon. They can be traced back to Bartholomew de la Hela in the time of King Henry II [1154-1189] and may well have been there since the Norman Conquest.[1]
William is thought to have been born in the early 14th century, and was the son of Sir Roger Hele of Hele, who was active around 1310.
Hele is a small village in the parish of the market town of Bradninch, 8 miles NE of Exeter on the road to Cullompton.
Bradninch from Castle Hill[2]
His father was a knight, but William was only an esquire.
We do not know who William married, but he had two sons: Nicholas and Roger.
William’s estates included East Membury, north of Axminster, which the Heles held in 1314-15.
Sir William Pole also tells us of East Chevithorne, just north of Tiverton:[3]
“Est Chevethorn. In ye latter ende of Kinge Edw 3 [1327-1377] Willm Hele was lord thereof; and soe from Heale it descended unto Francis of Combflory.”
Much of his early adult life would have been spent in the reign of the unpopular King Edward II (1307-1327). He would have seen the Great Famine of 1315-17, following torrential rain and bad harvests.
In 1325, Queen Isabella went to France to seek help from her brother King Charles. But, instead, she joined forces with her lover Roger Mortimer and they returned to England with the intention of deposing Edward. The king was captured and died in prison, leaving his young son Edward III as king.
We know that William was still alive near the end of Edward III’s reign, so he survived the Black Death of 1348.
We do not have a death date for William, but it appears to be in the latter part of the 14th century.
He left his elder son Nicholas as his heir. His younger son Roger inherited lands also known as Hele in Cornwood, NE of Plymouth.
[1] Sir William Pole (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description of the County of Devon,(1791)
[2] Bradninch – Wikipedia
[3] Pole.
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