John Bourchier, 1st Earl of Bath (20 July 1470 – 30 April 1539) was created

Earl of Bath Earl of Bath was a title that was created five times in British history, three times in the Peerage of England, once in the Peerage of Great Britain and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It is now extinct. Earls of Bath; First creati ...

in 1536. He was the feudal baron of Bampton in Devon.

Origins

Bourchier was born in

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, the eldest son and heir of Fulk Bourchier, Baron Fitzwarin (d. 18 September 1479) by his wife Elizabeth Dynham, second daughter and co-heiress of John Dynham, Baron Dynham. He was the brother of

Elizabeth Bourchier Elizabeth Cromwell (née Bourchier; 1598 –1665) was the wife of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the mother of Richard Cromwell, the second Lord Protector. Family and marriage Eli ...

Marriages

Bourchier married three times. His first wife was Cecily Daubeny, the daughter of Giles Daubeny, 8th Baron Daubeny and Elizabeth Arundell, the daughter of John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall. They had eight children. His second wife was Florence Bonville, widow of Humphrey Fulford, and daughter and coheir of John Bonville and Katharine Wingfield, the daughter of Robert Wingfield. His third wife was Elizabeth Wentworth, widow of Roger Darcy and Thomas Wyndham. She was the daughter of

Henry Wentworth Sir Henry Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk, KB (born c. 1448, died between 17 August 1499 and 27 February 1501), ''de jure'' 4th Baron le Despenser was an English baron who is notable for being the grandfather of Henry VIII's third wife, Jan ...

of Nettlestead and Anne Say, the daughter of John Say. ElizabethBourchier1548BrauntonDevon

With his first wife, Bourchier's heir was John Bourchier, who became the next earl. His other children from his first marriage were Elizabeth who married Edward Chichester, Amias, Dorothy who married John Fulford, Giles, Margaret or Margery, Anne, and Eleanor. Margery, a daughter of Lord Fitzwaren, was an attendant at the

Field of the Cloth of Gold The Field of the Cloth of Gold (, ) was a summit meeting between King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France from 7 to 24 June 1520. Held at Balinghem, between Ardres in France and Guînes in the English Pale of Calais, it was a ...

Death and burial

Bourchier was buried in Bampton Church in Devon, where he had endowed a

chantry A chantry is an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings: # a chantry service, a set of Christian liturgical celebrations for the dead (made up of the Requiem Mass and the Office of the Dead), or # a chantry chapel, a b ...

. Although part of an elaborate chest tomb survives in the church, according to

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (195 ...

it belong's to Bourchier's grandmother Thomasine Hankford, wife of William Bourchier. The first earl's tomb, which was destroyed sometime after 1770, was situated in the north aisle of Bampton Church and showed effigies of himself and his wife Cecily Daubeny with their eight children.

Notes

References

* * * * * , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Bath 1470 births 1539 deaths People from Essex 1

Bourchier Bourchier is an English surname, from French ''Boursier'', keeper of the purse. Bourchier is the Norman pronunciation. The Baron Bourchier, Barons Bourchier, Baron Berners, Barons Berners, Baron FitzWarin, Barons FitzWarin, Earl of Essex, Earls o ...

John, Bath 15th-century English people 16th-century English nobility