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1398
John Bettesthorne 1398
Mere, Wiltshire, England

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John Bettesthorne
1398
St Michael's Church, Mere, Wiltshire, England

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Sir John de de Bettesthorne, MP

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BETTESTHORNE, John (c.1329-1399)

sir john bettesthorne lord chadenwynch
St Michaels, Mere, Wiltshire
Sir John was born in 1329 to Roger Bettesthorne of Ashley, Hants and his wife Margaret, daughter of John Cormailles.
On the death of his mother in July 1349 he inherited the manors of Ashley and Chaddenwick, Bisterne and Shaftesbury.
In April 1360 Edward III ordered the officials at the Exchequer to allow Bettesthorne, who had been accused there of refusing to take up knighthood, a respite until the following Michaelmas, on the grounds that he was abroad with the army and was about to be knighted by the King. However, three months later he was pardoned for not receiving the honour after all, ‘in consideration of manifold services done by him in the company of Henry, duke of Lancaster, in the King’s wars and in the siege of Rennes in Brittany, as well as in the King’s last progress in France’; and that October he was exempted for life from ever having to assume the higher rank or from serving in any official capacity against his will. This last patent was confirmed by Richard II, 20 years later.
He married the Lady Gouda, a kinswoman of Edward III's Chancellor, Bishop edington of Winchester.
Through relations and wills the couple continued to receive parcels of land, some of which were still in dispute after his death.
In 1380 he joined with Sir Ralph Norton† in alienating in mortmain part of the manor of Dulton to the Augustinian monastery of Bonhommes at Edington, founded by his wife’s kinsman, Bishop Edington. In September 1397 he made a loan of 100 marks to Richard II, perhaps unwillingly, for his exclusion from royal offices and commissions over the previous five years hardly suggests that he was regarded as a committed supporter of the court party. Indeed, he took out a royal pardon a few months later. In 1398 Bettesthorne applied for a royal licence to augment a chantry of one chaplain in the parish church at Mere with two more chaplains, who were to pray for him and for the souls of his ancestors, and to found another chantry at Gillingham (Dorset). This involved grants of property at Clopton (Somerset) as well as at Mere and Gillingham, and the foundations were not completed before Bettesthorne’s death; it fell to his daughter and heir, Elizabeth, and her husband Sir John Berkeley I* of Beverstone (a younger son of Thomas, Lord Berkeley) to bring his plans to fruition. Bettesthorne died on 6 Feb. 1399 and was buried at Mere.