On Sunday, June 19, 2016 at 3:00:32 PM UTC-7, Kay Allen via wrote: > Dear Patrick and all, > VCH Warwickshire is available at British History Online.  This might throw some light on the Durvassal-Spiney=plus perhaps Holt issues.  The archives may have some discussion also. VCH Warwickshire is rather unhelpful, at least from the Durvassal side. It even questions that the women who sold to John Throckmorton were William Durvassal's granddaughters: "Joan, according to Dugdale, was the granddaughter of William Durvassal, but there seems no foundation for his guess." Yet we know from one of his ipms that William died with heirs Margaret and Joyce. Frederick William Hackwood in "Wednesbury ancient and modern: being mainly its manorial and municipal history", p. 41, reports the following. It does not cite the documents on which it is based, but is clearly derived from primary sources: "Henry Heronville, lord of Wednesbury, married Margaret, the daughter and heir of William Sperner. He died about St. Matthew's Day, 1406, after holding the Manor only three years. More than twenty years afterwards his name, his marriage, and his untimely death, transpire in the course of a long lawsuit." "From the records of a prolonged trial over the manor of Frankley in Worcestershire, still proceeding in the year 1430, it would appear that Margaret, the wife of Henry Heronville, was a daughter of William Spernore, and that Joyce, wife of William Swynfen, was another daughter, and that they claimed the right of remainder in the manor of Frankley, which should descend to them on the death of their mother Alice, they being their deceased father's only heirs. The two heiresses, and Swynfen, the husband of one being under age, prayed that the suit should remain till they arrived at full age; and strangely enough Henry Heronville, the husband of the other heiress, died while the trial was pending." His ipm lists his heirs as Joan, Alice and Margaret: http://www.history.ac.uk/cipm-19-part-i [no. 72] On the next page Hackwood goes on to say: "In 1420 the two younger daughters of the deceased Henry Heronville became nuns, Alice being over seventeen years of age, and Margaret under seventeen at the time of taking the veil. At the formal inquiry, which was then taken on oath (exactly as if each girl was dead to the world), it was given in evidence that they were co-heiresses in the manor of Wednesbury, the manor of Tymmore, and lands in "Tibyton," with their "sister Joan, wife of William Leventhorpe," who was their nearest heir. These inquisitions are here: http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/21-194/ http://www.inquisitionspostmortem.ac.uk/view/inquisition/21-195/ The next part was documented back in 1904 in a lawsuit over the Leventhorpe inheritance: ". . . that after the decease of the said William, Jane his wife should have the same for her life if she lived after his decease without husband, and if she took another husband, that then the right heirs of the same William should have the said lands and rents to them and their heirs. And the same William Leventhorp died, after whose decease the said Jane took to husband Henry Beamond, and after the same Henry died, after whose decease the same Jane took to husband Charles Nowell, and after the said Elizabeth, mother of the said John Hudleston, died, after whose decease, and after that the said Jane had taken to husband the said Charles Nowell, . . ." So there can be little doubt that Dugdale was doing more than guessing: Jane, wife of Henry Beaumont was daughter of Margaret (wife of Henry Heronville), daughter of William Durvassal als. Spernore. For the other heiress, remember we have Joyce, daughter of William Spernore married to William Swynfen. The last connection is them provided by Mill Stephenson in his "Monumental Brasses of Shropshire", Arch. Jour. vol 52, quotes Stebbing Shaw's History and Antiquities of Staffordshire (which I cannot find online): "John de la Hay, rector, grants to Richard Whitehill for life a moiety of certain lands in Rushale and Wallesal, co. Stafford, remainder to Margaret wife of William de Vernon, daughter and heir of Jocosa, late wife of William Swynfen, Esq., and to her heirs for ever." So the entire proof that the grantors of Spernore were the granddaughters of William Spernore was available when the editors dismissed it as an unfounded guess in 1945. taf