24. BOYS

Sampson  Tree

 WILLIAM DE  BOYS (24)

 

WILLIAM DE BOYS/ DE BOSCO.The Heralds’ Visitation of the County of Devon in 1564 has a family tree that begins with:

“William de Bosco, sive Boys, lord of the manor or house of Halberton 27 H 3 [1242-3]” . [1]It does not name his father, but gives him one son, also William.

Sir William Pole’s pedigree makes his father another William.[2]

 

Halberton is situated on the road from Tiverton to Taunton. The soil is principally red clay, and the countryside is gently undulating.

The Halberton History Group  tells us that Sir William’s manor house is believed to have been on the site of Halberton Court farmhouse.[3]

The village is divided into Higher Town and Lower Town, with a pond between them.

 

Sir William Pole also tells us that one of the principal men of Devon in the reign of King Henry III [1216-1272] was William Boys of Halberton, Kt. It was common practice for men of a certain wealth to be knighted, and so be liable to the king for military service, but this William de Boys is the only one of the family explicitly stated to be a knight.

Pole lists six Williams, who successively held the manor of Halberton. This Sir William was the third of these.

The 17^th-century antiquarian Tristram Risdon also notes Willelmus de Bosco, de Halberton, miles [knight] among the notable men of Devon in the reign of Henry III. [5]

It was in 1259 that a vicarage was endowed in the village of Halberton and a vicar appointed. Previously the church had been served by the Augustinian monks from Halberton Priory. From now on the monks were separate from the secular clergy.

In 1285 the de Boys family are recorded as holding the manor from the Earl of Gloucester. It was an earlier Earl of Gloucester who is said to have given Halberton to a previous William de Bosco or Boys after 1135.

The lord of the manor in 1285 was this later William de Boys. It then passed down to his son William, his grandson William, his great-grandsons William and John, the older brother dying without issue, and then to his great-great-granddaughter Alice.

Alice de Boys brought the manor of Halberton to her husband Henry de Burton in the latter part of the 14^th century.

 

Arms of Sr William de Bosco, or Boys, of Halberton, Argent, on a bend Geules, 3 cros formyes Argent.

 

[1] Visitation of the County of Devon 1564
[2] Sir William Pole (d.1635), Collections Towards a Description  of the County of Devon,(1791).
[3] https://halbertonhistorygroup.org.uk/halberton-from-domesday-to-1799/

[5] Risdon, Tristram (1811). Rees; et al. (eds.). The Chorographical Description or Survey of the County of Devon (updated ed.). Plymouth: Rees and Curtis.