daughter Betham

Unlikely she was the daughter of Sir John de Bohun, II, Lord of Midhurst & Anne (Halsham) de Bohan

Comments

From Nick Alexander

23 September 2023

I think that we are safe to put "daughter Betham" for the wife of the William Sandes born in c1405 as the son of John of Esthwaite. Esthwaite Hall is adjacent to Strickland Ees a curious geological feature beside Esthwaite Water. John may have married the daughter of Thomas Strickland the younger brother of Sir Walter Strickland of Sizergh. Sir Walter Strickland had served in the same Parliament as john's cousin Thomas Sandes.

Sir Walter's son was also named Thomas and therefore could have been related to John Sandes by marriage. Thomas Strickland junior married Mabel, daughter of Sir John de Betham of Beetham. Mabel had a brother Thomas de Betham who served in the Parliament of 1425. William Sandes may have married Thomas Betham's daughter, but there is no documentary evidence that he did.
Some records show William as marrying into the Bohun family which is very unlikely in terms of their difference in social status or of where they lived. Other records suggest that his wife's surname had other combinations of "B", "O", "H" and "M". I rest my case.

29 May 2023

I think it most unlikely that William Sandes of Furness Fells should have married a daughter of the de Bohun family. William was the son of John Sandes, the younger son of Robert del Sandes of St Bees in Cumberland. Under the custom of primogeniture applied at the time, John would not have inherited anything from his father who was in any case only a farmer who had fled his ancestral home at Sandsfield Burgh-by-Sands in about 1382 following either yet another incursion by the Scots or erosion of his land by a serious flood in the River Eden alongside his property.

John appears to have settled beside Esthwaite Water in the Lake District. Esthwaite was then in the county of Lancashire and young John was involved in a court case at Lancaster, the Couinty town, in 1401 with his father acting as his surety.

Close to the property at Esthwaite Hall is an unusual geological feature known as Strickland Eis. There are other smaller Eis further down the lake. This suggests to me that the Stricklands of Sizergh near Kendal owned the land on which John settled and this in turn suggests that John married into the Strickland family, probably to a niece of Sir Walter Strickland who had served in Parliament as Knight of the Shire for Westmorland just as John's grandfather Richard del Sandes had done for Cumberland.

Sir Walter's son Thomas married a daughter of the Betham family who were of the same social status and were also chosen to represent their County in later Parliaments.

If this is correct, William Sandes' father John was related by marriage to both the Sizergh and the Betham families.

The only known reference to the de Bohun or Bonham family is not specific and I suspect that it arises from an incorrect transcription from some ancient document.. Any researcher in past centuries before the era of digitised online information which we enjoy could easily have interpreted the hand-written name of the relatively obscure Betham family as indicating the much better known aristocratic Bohun or Bonham families
.
In my opinion, sons of poor farmers do not marry daughters of the nobility.

References

• https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bethum-1