Sir John d’Ewyas Knight

  General Notes:

~Pedigree taken from the footnotes of The Coucher Book on Chartulary of Whalley-Abbey, Vol. I, p. 121 ⁸²³

  Noted events in his life were:

• Background Information. ⁷¹⁵
The Visitation of Lancashire by William Flower, 1567, show John Devyas, of Yorkshire married to the daughter and one of the heires of Sir William Samlesbury of Samlesbury, Lancashire, Knight. They are shown as having a son named Nicholas Devyas who has a daughter, the sole heir who marries Gilbert Sowthworthe of Southworthe. (Southworth).

~Visitation of Lancashire by William Flower, 1567, pg. 26

• Background Information. ¹⁵⁷
Sir John d'Ewyas died sometime before 1311. He was a knight of the shire in 1295, and was a member of the Parliament that year for Lancashire. By his marriaged with Cecily de Samelsbury, he acquired the moiety of the Samlesbury estate. There was a long legal contest between Sir d'Ewyas and his brother-in-law Sir Holland before the inheritance was settled.

~The Genealogy of the Southworths, pg. 408

• Background Information. ⁸²⁷
The D'ewias or Deuyas (d'Ewyas) family became possessed of lands in Yorkshire, mostly within the Lacy fee, by the marriage of Nicholas Deuyas, kt., to Alice daughter of Jordan Foliot. John Deuyas, the issue of this marriage, increased the family estate by his marriage to Cecily de Samlesbury. He was one of the knights of the shire returned for the county to the Parliaments of 1295 and 1298, having received knighthood before 1284. [Parl. Writs, i, 587; Cal. Close, 1279-88, p. 286] He died before the end of 1309, [Cal. Inq. Hen. VII, i, 158.] leaving numerous issue besides Nicholas his successor, [ Roger, Towneley MS. HH, no. 1771] who appears to have held aloof from the rebellion of Thomas of Lancaster. Nicholas Deuyas was summoned in 1324 to attend the Great Council at Westminster. [Parl. Writs, ii, 776] Early in 1326 he settled his estates here and in Riseholme, co. Lincoln, upon his daughter and heir Alice and her issue by Gilbert son and heir of Gilbert de Southworth, to whom he had then recently given her in marriage. [Final Conc. (Rec. Soc. Lancs. and Ches.), ii, 66] About All Saints' Day 1335 he leased the manor-house, 169 acres of land, 11 acres of meadow with the mills to his son-in-law for a term of eight years for £11 9s. yearly, [Towneley MS. HH, no. 1775] and died before 15 May following, when dower was assigned to Joan his widow in half the manor, including the chief messuage which William Deuyas had lately held, and in Mellor. [Towneley MS. HH, no. 1741]

'Townships: Samlesbury', in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 6, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 303-313

John married Cecily de Samlesbury, daughter of Sir William de Samlesbury Knight and Avina de Notton, in 1295.⁸²⁷ (Cecily de Samlesbury died after 1311 in Lancashire, England ¹⁵⁷.)