Edge, Branscombe

Description

The existing building is U-shaped, although may originally have been built around the courtyard. Only a short section survives of the original dry moat.

An early circular stone staircase tower is contained within the angle of the north wing so as to give access to a second floor, newly created by the addition of a raised ceiling to the great hall.

The stone splay of an upstairs window shows ancient graffiti-incised drawings of sailing ships, thought to represent those of the Spanish Armada, becalmed offshore near Branscombe in 1588.

Chapel

A chapel, attached to the house, dates from the end of the thirteenth or early fourteenth century.

Possibly built by Walter Branscombe, Bishop of Exeter from 1258-1280, it occupied the present south wing, where a large rose window containing four cusped trefoils originally set within the outer gable of the west wall survives on what is now an internal wall, hidden behind a later chimney stack in the attic.

Samuel Lysons in 1822, described the chapel as being in a poor state of repair, and desecrated. An ancient stone piscina has also survived, reset into a wall in the hall.

de Branscombe

A Roger de Bromkescom first appears in the records in 1218 in the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272). The Dean and Chapter of Exeter Cathedral held the manor of Branscombe historically, but the Branscombe family, also spelled Bronscomb, Branscombe, Bronescombe, and Brounscomb, took their name from the parish, and are mentioned in this period in connection with land held mainly at Colyton between Seaton and Axminster. It is not clear when, or even if, they ever lived at Edge, but may have held it before the end of the 14th century, when the Wadham family acquired it.

According to W.G.Hoskins, Bishop Branscombe (c.1220 – 1280) was a member of the family and possibly born there; though others appear to dispute this.

In 1296 a Richard de Branscombe was clerk to Gilbert de Knovill, Sheriff of Devon from 1293-1301. By 1298 he is recorded as being both clerk and deputy to de Knovill, and representing the sheriff at the Exchequer, and by 1299 is made a Freeman of the City of Exeter, one of the first to be so. An Adam de Branscombe, was twice Member of Parliament as a Knight of the Shire for Devon in 1340 and 1348. His daughter Agnes Branscombe married Sir Richard Champernowne of Modbury, Sheriff of Devon in 1354 and 1355, and their son, Sir Otho Champernowne, married Agnes Courtenay, daughter of Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham (c.1355-1406).

A likely relative is Thomas Branscombe, MP for Plympton Erle in 1393, as is a Branscombe of the period who was rector of Lustleigh on Dartmoor.

Another Richard Branscombe, a justice, and "a man well learned in the laws of the land", was three times Sheriff of Devon and Keeper of Exeter Castle during the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377), from 1359 to1361, in 1367 and in 1375, and gave legal counsel to Hugh de Courtenay, 2nd/10th Earl of Devon (1303-1377), father to among others, Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham and William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1381 to 1396, born at the Exminster home of the Courtenays. In 1353 Richard Branscombe married Margaret de Beauchamp, widow of Sir John de Beauchamp of Ryme, today (2016) Ryme Intrinseca, Dorset. There were no children by the marriage.

The arms of Branscombe were stated by Sir William Pole as: Gules, a chevron vairy between three martlets or.

For Bishop "Brounscombe" of Exeter he gives: Or on a chevron sable three caterfoiles or two keys in chief a sword in base argent.

Even allowing for stripping out the keys and sword, both elements of the arms of the See of Exeter, the arms are very different.

Wadham

Towards the end of the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377), the estate of Edge was acquired by the de Wadham family, who took their name from the manor of Wadham near Exmoor in the parish of Knowstone which according to Domesday Book, also contained the two separate manors of Chenudestane and Chenuestan, more anciently known as Cnudstone and Cnutston with the likely meaning 'Canute Stone', near South Molton in North Devon.

The nearby manor of "Wadeham" is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as being held from William the Conqueror (1066–1087) by the Saxon Thane Ulf, who before 1066 held Wadham, and other manors in Wessex and elsewhere, from the Saxon King Edward the Confessor (1042–1066).

Only twenty Anglo-Saxon thanes in Devonshire survived the Norman conquest of England and retained their antiquated status as thanes, and as Ulf is still described in 1086 as "one of the king's thanes", it is likely he was serving the Norman king satisfactorily, and from 1086 as well as holding Wadham, he became the possessor of the manor of Axminster, under William Cheever (alias Chièvre), from the King in demesne.

Samuel Lysons suggested that the de Wadham family may have been descendants of Ulf.

Algar (thane), is mentioned in Domesday as holding the neighbouring manors of Chenuestan and Chenudestane from the King. It is not currently known if this is the same Algar (also spelled Aelfgar) connected with Brictric, son of Algar a grandson of Aethelweard Maew, scion of the House of Wessex and possible lord of Bristol; but, in 1016, following a Viking invasion, Aelfgar (or Algar) Maew submitted to King Cnut the Great (c.995-1035) in his successful war against King Edmund Ironside (23 April-30 November 1016), which may perhaps explain the origin of the name Canute Stone for Knowstone.

An Algar de Wadham exists in the records as late as the reign of King Henry III (1216–1272) and certainly by the time of King Edward I (1272–1307), according to Sir William Pole, a William Wadham is recorded as the freeholder of East and West Wadham.

The Wadham family held Edge for eight generations until, in 1618, on the death of Dorothy Wadham, widow of Nicholas Wadham, co-founders of Wadham College, Oxford, it passed with Nicholas's other possessions, including the manors of Ashreigney, Harberton, Wadham, Knowstone, Lustleigh, Silverton, Rewe, Penselwood, Chiselborough, Hardington Mandeville, Chilton Cantelo, Trent and Merryfield, Ilton to the heirs general of his father, his nieces and their descendants.

The descent of the Wadham family of Edge given by Sir William Pole (1561-1635) is as follows:

Sir John I Wadham

Sir John I Wadham, who we find residing at Edge before the end of the reign of King Edward III (1327–1377).

Given that nothing of the house architecturally is older than the late 13th or early 14th century, and that it was built on a villein holding probably outside the bounds of the manor of Branscombe, the possibility must exist that if Bishop Bronescombe or the See of Exeter were not the builders of Edge and its chapel, then this John Wadham, or his heir, was.

In 1374, Lady Wadham was given permission to celebrate mass in her private chapel at Edge.

Sir John II Wadham (c. 1340 – 1412)

Sir John Wadham (d. 1412), ancestor to Queen Jane Seymour, King Edward VI and the Seymour Dukes of Somerset, was a Justice of the Common Pleas from 1389 to 1398, during the reign of King Richard II (1377–1399). He was MP for Exeter in 1399, and after Richard II was deposed by Henry Bolingbroke who became King Henry IV (1399–1413), was MP for Devon in 1401 as a Knight of the Shire.

Sir John Wadham, 'the judge', was one of John Prince's Worthies of Devon: "All I have met with him further, is this encomium" says the Devonshire biographer, "that being free of speech, he mingled it well with discretion; so that he never touched any man, how mean so ever out of order, either for sport or spight; but with alacrity of spirit and soundness of understanding menaged all his proceedings".

Although, Pole and Prince both stated him to be the son of Sir John I Wadham above, his modern History of Parliament biographer suggests he may have been the son of Gilbert Wadham (c.1320 – 1383), who in 1383 quitclaimed to him a rent in Wadham. The deed was witnessed by Sir John's lifelong friend and colleague Sir William Hankford (c.1350 – 1423) of Annery, Monkleigh in Devon, Chief Justice of the King's Bench from 1413 until 1423. The biographer adds: "It is curious that the origins of a man of such distinction as Wadham should have been lost... If his origins are obscure, so too are the beginnings of his career as a lawyer. Where he received his education is not known, but by 1371 he was practicing in the central courts as an attorney."

As he writes of another of his colleagues and a fellow sergeant-at-law, Sir John Hill (died 1408), a Justice of the King's Bench from 1389-1407, MP and later, kinsman, "like many families which owe their rise to proficiency in the law, the Hills were obscure in origin." Prince points out that at this time there were no less than five sergeants at law, all natives of Devon; Cary, two Hills, Hankford and Wadham. Wadham was a sergeant-at-law by 1383, and in 1384 was in receipt of a livery from Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon (c.1357-1419), being one of his legal counsel.

His parliamentary biographer gives us an insight into Wadham's independence and integrity: In 1391, one of the earl of Devon's retainers had been indicted for murder, and Sir James Chudleigh (MP) of Ashton and Sir William Sturmy (or 'Esturmy') of Wulfhall had approached the earl in an attempt to prevent a disturbance, whereupon the earl had not only threatened Sturmy but had accused Wadham as a "false justice."

When, notwithstanding, the trial proceeded, Sir John Grenville (d.1412) of Bideford, a cousin of the Courtenays, brought a message from the earl to Wadham charging him to "sit more uprightly, without partiality in this session than the last." These are the words of one who has failed to influence the course of justice, and the earl's attempts to save his retainer, "in spite of the teeth of the said John Wadham and William Sturmy", resulted in his appearance before the King's Council and a stern warning to respect the law in future.

Wadham's appointment as an arbitrator in one of the disputes of Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham (c1355-1406) only a few months later, and his connection with other members of the Courtenay family, perhaps suggest that the earl's words are not to be taken as a deep-seated grudge against him, although earl Edward may well have resented the show of independence displayed by his former counsellor.

In 1387, only three years after he was constituted a judge, he was made a King's serjeant. "He had a large practice, and thereby made a great addition to his estates" adding to both his ancestral estate at Wadham, and at Edge, and the 'inquisitio post mortem' in 1413 mentions six manors in Gloucestershire, Dorset, and Somerset, among the latter being 'Muryfield' near Ilminster, acquired around 1400, and three manors in Devon, besides lands and messuages in 23 parishes.

His Devon landholdings included the manors of Wadham, Edge in Branscombe, Lustleigh, Silverton and half the manor of Harberton, the latter two both purchased in 1386 and 1390 respectively, from Cecily Turberville married, as his second wife, to Sir Richard Turberville of Bere Regis, Somerset. The eventual extinction of the once-mighty de Turbervilles of Bere Regis became, in time, the inspiration for the fictional D'Urbervilles of Kingsbere in the novel by Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Cecily Turberville was sister and a co-heiress of John de Beauchamp, 3rd Baron Beauchamp of Hatch or "Hache"(1329–1361), of the feudal barony of Hatch Beauchamp, Admiral of the Fleet and Warden of the Cinque Ports, whose first husband Sir Roger I St Maur (1314–1362), was of the Seymour family of Hatch Beauchamp, later of Wulfhall or Wolfhall, and ancestor of the Seymour Dukes of Somerset.

John Wadham bought the manor of Lustleigh on Dartmoor in 1403, and it remained in the Wadham family for the next 200 years and six generations. In 1411, shortly before his death, he acquired the manor of Redworthy in Ashreigney which passed on his death to his son Thomas.According to his parliamentary biographer he also acquired over 300 acres of land in Branscombe, Devon, the manor of Haydon, Dorset near Sherborne Castle, and lands in Blackmoor Vale, Dorset. In Gloucestershire, he and Joan Wadham held the manor of Sandhurst for their lives from William and Isabel Beaumont. Silverton descended from the Wadham to the Wyndham family and Silverton Park, a large neo-Classical mansion, was built there in 1839–45 by George Wyndham, 4th Earl of Egremont and demolished in 1901.

Wadham's landholdings in Somerset were even more extensive than those in Devon and mostly consisted of properties forfeited by Sir John Cary, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who was attainted by the Merciless Parliament. These lands included Hardington Mandeville, a moiety of Chilton Cantelo, both near Yeovil, and premises in Trent which he purchased from the Crown jointly with William Hankford and John Hill in 1389 for 600 marks. Hankford's daughter Jane married Sir Robert Cary (died c. 1431), twelve times MP for Devon, Sir John Cary's son.

These large landholdings in Somerset appear to have moved Wadham's principal interest away from Devon and Edge, and towards the end of his life he made his main residence at Merryfield, Ilton, near Ilminster, Somerset, which he had purchased from Cecily Turberville.In about 1400, he built a substantial moated and fortified Manor House at Merryfield, a name derived from the Old English Mere (lake) corresponding to the Old Saxon 'Meri', and demolished after 1618 by Sir John Wyndham (1558–1645), a nephew and co-heir of Nicholas Wadham (1531-1609). Only the rectangular moat survives today, still known locally as "Wadham's Castle", in the middle of agricultural land to the south of RAF Merryfield, now RNAS Merryfield aerodrome.

In May 1398 he was discharged from the bench "at his own request" and received a grant from the issues of Somerset and Dorset "for good service".

John Wadham first married, according to his will, Maud, with whom he had a son, and then in 1385, Joan Wrothesley, daughter of Sir William Wrottesley of Wrottesley Hall, near Blore in Staffordshire, sister of Sir Hugh Wrottesley, Founder Member and eighteenth knight of The Order of the Garter in 1348. John and Joan Wadham had eight children. Five sons: Robert, who died without progeny; William, who shared his maternal grandfather's Christian name, and became the Wadham heir; another John; Walter, who went into the church; Thomas, later of Redworthy in Ashreigney; and three daughters: Margery, Joan, and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth is probably the 'Isabella' Wadham who married Sir Robert I Hill (Hylle, Hulle) of the ancient family de la Hill in the manor of Kilmington, near Axminster in Devon who, like his father-in-law, also became a Justice of the Common Pleas, from 1408 to 1423. Sir Robert and Lady Hill retired to Shilston (see Shilston Barton, now Shilstone House) near Modbury, where their eldest son, Robert II Hill (c.1392–1444), Sheriff of Devon in 1428, married Margaret Champernowne of Modbury (1396–1434).

Robert and Margaret's daughter, Elizabeth Hill, married Sir Otis Gilbert (1419-1493) of Compton, Sheriff of Devon in 1476, whose daughter, Isabella Gilbert, married Sir Thomas Grenville (1455-1513) from whom descended the famous admiral Sir Richard Grenville of Bideford and Buckland Abbey (1542-1591). From the Gilbert's son, Thomas Gilbert of Compton (1446-1529) descended the explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c.1539-1583) of Compton Castle, still administered by the Gilbert family on behalf of the National Trust (NT) today, in 2016.

Sir Walter Raleigh (c.1554-1618) of Sherborne Castle, a half-brother of Humphrey Gilbert through their uterine mother Catherine Champernowne, was directly descended from Sir Richard Champernowne of Modbury (d.1418), brother of Margaret Champernowne of Modbury (1396-1434), and Isabella Wadham's collateral descendant Sir Nicholas Wadham (c.1472-1542), by marrying his cousin, Joan Hill grand-daughter of Robert II Hill (C.1392-1444), was related to all three famous Devonian adventurers. Sir Walter Raleigh's son Carew Raleigh (1605-1666), born in the Tower of London during his father's imprisonment there, was educated at Wadham College from 1619, the year following his father's execution.

Margery Wadham married Sir John Stourton, 1st Baron Stourton (1400–1462), of Stourton and Stourhead, son of Sir William de Stourton (c. 1373 – 1413), Speaker of the House of Commons in 1413, the first year of the reign of King Henry V (1413–1422). Their daughter Margaret Stourton married Sir George Darrel of Littlecote, Wiltshire whose daughter Elizabeth Darrel married Sir John Seymour (died 1491), warden of Savernake Forest, grandparents to Queen Jane Seymour third wife of King Henry VIII, and Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset also created 1st Viscount Beauchamp of Hache on the marriage of Jane Seymour to the King in 1536, in honour of their de Beauchamp descent. They were thus great-grandparents to King Edward VI.

Wadham left each of his children a hundred pounds (except Walter who, having chosen the church, received forty) with the proviso that "if my said infants die before they come of age or be promoted, the sum bequeathed to them shall be divided among my other infants". The 'inquisitio post mortem' valued his holdings at £115 p.a. Very little of this property had been acquired by inheritance or marriage; in fact most had been purchased piecemeal over the years starting in 1376 when he was still a young man.

Interestingly, in his will dated March 12, 1411, as well as providing for his sister Cicely and her daughter, he also includes money to be expended on "prayers for the souls of ....Richard Brankescomb (and) Margaret (de Beauchamp) his wife, (as well as) Cicely Turberuill ...", who died at Merryfield in 1393. Richard Branscombe, clearly a friend, Sheriff of Devon in John Wadham's youth and later, and a man "well-learned in the laws of the land", might well have taken an early interest in John's legal education and career and may have been, after his own marriage into the de Beauchamp family in 1353, the very person who introduced him to Cecily St. Maur or Seymour, (then Turberville; heiress of the de Beauchamps), which led to Wadham's lifelong friendship with her, and to his purchase of Merryfield and other of her estates.

Before his death, Sir John Wadham founded a chantry connected with the Church of St Mary, Ilminster dedicated to St. Katherine to which, according to his will, he gave land and houses at Desborough, Saltcombe (today perhaps Salcombe Regis), and Harberton in Devon, and at Aldington, Henstridge, and Stoke-under-Ham, now Stoke-sub-Hamdon, in Dorset. The estate of Stoke-sub-Hamdon in Tintinhull hundred near Yeovil had passed to the Beauchamps of Hatch, becoming known as Stoke Beauchamp, until in 1443 it was bought by the Duchy of Cornwall, which still own it today (2016).

Two hundred years after the death of Sir John, the itinerant stone carvers and masons of Wadham College, Oxford came largely from the Somerset villages near Ham Hill of Stoke-sub-Hamdon and neighbouring Chiselborough which, by then, formed part of the estate of the co-founder, Nicholas Wadham (1531-1609).

Sir William Wadham (c. 1390 – 1452)

Sir William Wadham, son and heir of Merryfield and Edge, was Sheriff of Dorset in 1438 and Sheriff of Devon in 1442. His monumental brass said by William Henry Hamilton Rogers in 1888 to depict him with his mother, Joan Wrottesley, survives in the Church of St Mary, Ilminster, Somerset. It is among the best surviving brasses from the fifteenth century, and depicts him in complete plate armour exported to England by Milanese armourers; the finest of the period. His mother is wearing "widow's weeds".

Sir William first married Margaret Chiseldon, a daughter and co-heiress of John Chiseldon of Holcombe Rogus, Sheriff of Devon in 1406, who brought the Wadhams the manors of Penselwood near Stourton, Aunk, South Tawton, and Rewe, where his arms impaling his wife's may be seen carved on the pews at the Church of St Mary the Virgin. Margaret Chiseldon's sister Maude inherited the Manor of Holcombe Rogus and a moiety of the Penselwood estate, and married Sir John Bluett, Sheriff of Devon in 1445, lord of the nearby Greenham Barton and Cothay Manor, and later, of the Manor of Kittisford.

Sir William and Margaret Wadham had many children: John III Wadham, their heir, was born in 1405.

Elizabeth Wadham married Sir Robert Stawell, grandson and heir to Sir Thomas Stawel of Cothelstone Manor, Sheriff of Devon in 1435 and MP in 1420 for Somerset, where the Stawells had lived since 1066: In 1453, towards the end of the Hundred Years War, Robert Stawell was taken prisoner at the Battle of Castillon, and a large ransom had to be found to secure his release, but Elizabeth and Robert Stawell's descendants continued to live at Cothelstone until 1791. Their daughter Anne Stawell married John V Daunt of Wotton-under-Edge in about 1440, whose son John VI Daunt of Wotton married Margery de Oulepenne, heiress of Owlpen Manor, Gloucestershire.

Another daughter, Joan Wadham, was the first of three wives to Thomas Malet (died 1502) of Sutton Manor in Sutton Mallet and of Corypole, today's Curry Mallet, Enmore, Deandon and St. Audries; a family of great antiquity said to be descended from William Malet. Their second son, Sir Baldwin Malet, was Solicitor General to King Henry VIII from 1531 to 1533, and the Wadham arms impaling Malet can be seen in stained glass at St James Church, Iddesleigh.

Ann Wadham, married William Montacute (or Montagu) of Henley Manor, near Crewkerne.

Lawrence Wadham of Merifield married a daughter of Sir William Hody (d.1524) of Pilsdon and his wife Eleanor Malet, a daughter of Sir Baldwin Malet, and a cousin. Sir William Hody was Attorney General in 1485 on the accession of King Henry VII (1485–1509), Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1486-1513), and was the son of Sir John Hody, Chief Justice of the King's Bench.

A further son, another William Wadham, married Jane, daughter and co-heiress of William Payne of Catherston Leweston, Dorset starting a cadet branch of the family.

Margaret Wadham married Gilbert Yarde of Bradley Manor, Newton Abbott, one of the most complete medieval manors in Devon and now maintained by the National Trust (NT), whose father Richard Yarde, Sheriff of Devon in 1443, mostly created Bradley with his wife Isabella from 1402.

James Wadham, the youngest, was sole patron of the living of Penselwood in 1481, and the Penselwood estate stayed in the Wadham family until the death of Nicholas II Wadham in 1609.

Sir William Wadham (died 1452) married secondly Katherine Payne, the widow of John Stourton (died 1438), and lies buried with his mother in a splendid altar tomb at the Church of St Mary, Ilminster in the transept traditionally known as 'the Wadham aisle', built in spectacular Perpendicular English Gothic style from the local Hamstone, of which there is every reason to believe he was the builder.

Sir John III Wadham (1405–1476)

Sir John III Wadham of Merifield and Edge, the eldest son and heir, added to the family possessions when he married Elizabeth Popham early in the fifteenth century, a daughter and co-heiress of Sir Stephen Popham (c. 1386 – 1444) of Popham, Hampshire who was five times MP for Hampshire, and commanded on the right wing of Henry V's army at Agincourt in 1415.

Another member of the family was later seated at Huntworth, Somerset, Sir John Popham (c. 1531 – 1607), Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Chief Justice of England, who funded his nephew George Popham as a co-founder in 1607 with Raleigh Gilbert of Popham Colony, in America.

Among the many possessions the Wadhams inherited from the Pophams were the manors of Popham, Hampshire and of Pole Anthony, Tiverton (which the Pophams had inherited from the Reade, or Rede, family), and the manors of Alvington, Binstead, Northwood, Fairlee and Shide on the Isle of Wight, where they were great landowners. These descended to the Pophams via the St Martin family who had possessed them since the reign of Edward I. The Popham inheritance also brought with it more land around Merryfield at South Braydon, near Ilton.

A brother of Sir John, William Wadham, inherited the manor of Anke, now Aunk, through his mother, and married Jane, daughter and co-heiress of William Payne of Catherston Leweston, Dorset, establishing the Catherston branch of the Wadham family, one of whom, John Wadham of Catherston (1520–1584), was Captain of Sandsfoot Castle by Weymouth from 1550 until his death, Recorder (judge) of Lyme Regis, MP for Melcombe Regis in 1553, and Weymouth in 1554. There is a monumental brass to his memory at Whitchurch Canonicorum, Dorset where he is buried.

On the eve of a planned pilgrimage to the Holy Land, two years after the devastating Wars of the Roses had initially ended in the triumph of Edward of York, who became King Edward IV from (1461–1470) and then again from (1471–1483), Sir John Wadham made his will, dated 6 August 1473. He had three sons and four daughters.

A Margaret Wadham, widow, whose will is proved March 23, 1518, leaves her second son Guy Bonvyll (Bonville) "my manor at Lambroke", today East Lambrook Manor, and an Elizabeth Wadham (born 1425) married, as his second wife, John Fauntleroy of Fauntleroy's Marsh manor, Alveston, near Sherborne, Devon.

Sir John's brother, William Wadham of Catherston, was one of his executors and his will is proved 1476.

Sir John IV Wadham (died 1502)

Sir John IV Wadham, the eldest son and heir of Merifield and Edge from 1476, first married a daughter of John I Cheyne of Pine (Pyne or Pinhoe), Sheriff of Devon in 1444, and then Elizabeth Stucley, a daughter of Sir Hugh I Stucley of Affeton Castle, Sheriff of Devon in 1449, and his wife Katherine de Affeton (died 1467), only daughter and heir of John Affeton of the Manor of Affeton. Sir Nicholas I Wadham (c. 1472 –1542), was their son and heir.

Sir John IV Wadham's sister Alice Wadham married Sir Nicholas Stucley (born 1451), eldest son and heir of Sir Hugh I Stucley (1398/1414 – c. 1457). Nicholas Stucley and Alice Wadham's son and heir, Sir Thomas Stucley (1473–1542), a first cousin of Sir Nicholas I Wadham (c. 1472 – 1542), was Sheriff of Devon in 1521 and married Anne Wode (or Wood), daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Wode of Childrey and Bingley (according to Pole, "Wood of Binley"), MP for Wallingford in 1478 and Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1500 to 1502, when he died.

Sir John's brother, Sir Edward Wadham of Pole Anthony, Tiverton, and of Tomarton, Gloucestershire, was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset (1502) and Sheriff of Gloucestershire (1524, 1530, and 1540), and Esquire of the Body at the funeral of King Henry VII (1485–1509), in 1509. A Thomas Wadham is also mentioned as having been an Esquire of the Body in this period. Sir Edward Wadham's will is dated 1547. On his death, Pole Anthony reverted to the main branch of the Wadham family, whilst the old manor of Tomarton, Gloucestershire reverted to Sir John St. Loe (1500–1559) of Sutton Court, Sheriff of Somerset, MP and friend of John Locke. Until the 1540s a considerable part of the St. Loe patrimony remained with Sir Edward Wadham, who had married the widow of St. Loe's grandfather.

Sir John Wadham's will, dated 20 March 1501, leaves the bulk of his estate to his son Nicholas, including "the manor(s) of Alvyngton, Venicott, and Braden", and pays for "glasynge of a paene of new werke in Mowntegew" probably Montacute Priory, later dissolved. The Wadham armorials are still to be seen in stained glass in the Library at Montacute House, now maintained by the National Trust (NT), then home to the Phelips family; although the present house, like Wadham College, Cranborne Manor and parts of Dunster Castle (NT), is thought to be the work of the mason-architect William Arnold and is Jacobean. His will also mentions a legacy of £20 a year "to go to the exhibicion of my daughter Alianour in sum house of Religion of women, with a woman to waite on her". He asks that he be buried in the tomb of his grandfather Sir William at the Church of St Mary, Ilminster.

The will of a John Wadham of Merifield in co. Somerset, Clerk, written in 1503 and proved at Lambeth, on July 12, 1505, is of some interest in that he wills "that the residue of my goods be disposed for the contention of the debts of Sir John Wadham, Knt., formerly my master, and of his wife, both deceased."

Sir Nicholas I Wadham (c. 1465 – 1542)

Sir Nicholas I Wadham from 1502 inherited Merryfield and Edge, and was MP for Somerset in 1529. He married four times.

His first wife, his cousin Joan Hill, was a daughter of Robert Hill of Halfway, Bridport and Houndstone (1421-1493) and Alice Stourton, a daughter of John Stourton (died 1438) of the manor of Preston Plucknett (see Abbey Farm House, Yeovil), and of Brympton d'Evercy, and widow of Sir William Daubeney of Barrington Court (NT).

Joan Wadham and her sister Margaret Hill, who married Sir Hugh Luttrell (1456-1521) of Dunster Castle, were thus half-sisters of Sir Giles Daubeney, 1st Baron Daubeney (1451-1508) who joined Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond following his return from exile in France, as did Sir Hugh Luttrell, and fought for him at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. Both men were lavishly rewarded when the Earl of Richmond became King Henry VII (1485-1509).

Sir Nicholas and Joan Wadham had four sons and two daughters: Laurence Wadham, who died at the manor of Houghton near Bigbury, Devon in 1522 and whose only child, Nicholas Wadham, married to Dorothy Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, died without progeny;

Giles Wadham of Barton St David, Somerset, who "being on lyfe at Deiesse" (or, "living for Godliness") was left his father's best horse, lived at the rectory in Barton St David, married Agnes Clauson (Clausen/Clausey) of Barton and had a son Edward Wadham of Meare and a daughter, Dorothy Wadham, who married Hugh Worth of the manor of Worth, in the parish of Washfield near Tiverton, Devon. The church of St. Mary the Virgin, Washfield has various monuments and brasses dedicated to the Worth family. Worth House, replaced the medieval manor knocked down in the 1930s.

Edward Wadham is mentioned in the muster lists for 1569: "Edward Wadham, gent, two corslets furnished, and a gelding for a light horseman furnished". He married twice. Firstly, to Margaret Young, one of the two daughters of Sir John Young by Joan Wadham who had first married Sir Giles Strangways (1528–1562), and who was therefore his first cousin once removed, and then to Alice Carew born in Devon, the Alice Wadham of Foscott or Foxcote, Somerset near Hardington Bampfylde, who died in 1620. The rectory at Meare, appropriated to Glastonbury in 1332 "and charged with a vicarage in 1351" was let by the Crown during the sixteenth century to tenants including Edward Wadham who was resident in the 1580s until his death in 1614. A "fair house" adjoining the churchyard in the sixteenth century may have been the rectory house. It had five chambers and a chapel, but was one of the parsonage houses said to be decayed by 1618 and not recorded again. Edward Wadham's close neighbour at the manor and Manor Farmhouse, Meare from 1582 was his kinsman Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford.

Another son of Sir Nicholas, Andrew Wadham, was in 1544, "one of the Gentlemen Ushers of the Queen's grace": The Queen in question being Catherine Parr, who on the death of Henry VIII (1509–1547), married Sir Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, another kinsman of the Wadhams (see the Wadham/Stourton connection under Sir John II Wadham above), and cousin of Andrew Wadham's half-sisters, Jane and Katherine Wadham (see below).

The Seymour connection also doubtless explains why from 1540 Andrew Wadham was in charge of Sharpham Park on behalf of the Crown after the dissolution of Glastonbury Abbey, as it became the property of another kinsman, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the earl of Hertford's father.

Andrew Wadham married, as her fourth husband, Anne Saunders (1512–1565), formerly Lady Longueville, daughter of Lawrence Saunders (1480–1555) of Harrington, Northamptonshire, who appears in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and "who was burnt for testimony of the gospel in the Little Park within the city of Coventry, 2 and 3 Philip and Mary". Together with Bartholomew Tate, her son by her second husband Sir Bartholomew Tate of Laxton, Northants, they bought the former nunnery of Delapré Abbey in 1548 (the Abbey of St. Mary de la Pré in Northamptonshire), but had no children before Andrew Wadham died in 1550.

Mary Wadham married Sir Richard Chudleigh of the Manor of Ashton, who died in 1558 having had issue, and her sister Elizabeth Wadham married firstly, Sir Edward Bampfield (d.1528), today spelled Bampfylde, of the Manor of Poltimore.

Their son and heir, Richard Bampfield (1526–1594), who was only two years old at his father's death, was presumably the hero of a sensational story which has been handed down to us by Prince "in a memorable passage of undoubted credit" to the effect that "one of the heirs of the house, not many generations back," being ward to "some very great person in the East country," was taken away in his infancy, and brought up in ignorance of his real position and prospects. He was trained to be a servant, and, when discovered by one of his late father's tenantry, was employed as a huntsman in his said guardian's establishment. The Poltimore farmer is then said to have abducted him, to have taken him before the proper authorities, and to have duly established the right of his young landlord to his inheritance.

This Richard Bampfield, at the age of fifty became Sheriff of Devon in 1576, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and began construction of the Tudor period Poltimore House. His mother Elizabeth Wadham, a widow at the time of her second marriage to John Warre of Chipleigh (Chipley Park, Somerset) second son of Sir Richard Warre of Hestercombe and his wife Joan Hody, daughter of Sir William Hody of Pilsdon, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (1486–1513) was a daughter of Nicholas Wadham of Merrifield, co. Somerset. They also went on to have children.

Richard Bampfield married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Sydenham of Brympton d'Evercy, Somerset by whom he had issue. His sister, Elizabeth Bampfield, was the wife of George Perceval (1561-1601) of the Manor of Sydenham Somerset, ancestor to the Earls of Egmont.

Sir Nicholas Wadham's eldest surviving son and heir was John V Wadham.

Sir Nicholas was Sheriff of Devon in 1502 and 1515, Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset in 1498 and 1534, and Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1516. In 1503 he was Esquire of the Body to King Henry VII (1485–1509), and Knighted in 1504 "at ye creacion of Prince Henry", then thirteen years of age. He was Captain of the Isle of Wight at Carisbrooke Castle from 1509 to 1520, where his arms are carved on the governor's house, one of the Commission in 1512 for fitting out at Southampton the abortive expedition under Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset to aid Ferdinand of Aragon in his invasion of France, Vice Admiral to Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, High Admiral of England from 1522 to 1523, and was Knight of the Shire for Somerset during the Reformation Parliament of 1529 to 1534.

In 1524 he was granted a patent, licensing him to make a park at Merifield of 200 acres of pasture and 40 acres of woodland. In 1530 he was appointed one of the Commissioners for making inquisition into the estates of Cardinal Wolsey.

His second wife Margaret Seymour, a kinswoman, was a sister of Sir John Seymour of Wulfhall (1474–1536) married to Margery Wentworth, parents of Queen Jane Seymour. Her tomb is in St. Mary's Church, Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight.

Margaret Seymour had three children by Sir Nicholas Wadham; another Nicholas, who died as a baby in 1508, whose monumental chrysom brass is in St Peter's church, Ilton where he lies buried beneath the arms of Wadham and the angel wings of Seymour, and Katherine and Jane Wadham, first cousins to Queen Jane Seymour, Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, Thomas Seymour, 1st Baron Seymour of Sudeley, and Elizabeth Seymour who married John Paulet, 2nd Marquess of Winchester, having previously been married to Gregory Cromwell, 1st Baron Cromwell, the son of Thomas Cromwell.

Both Wadham sisters were raised as nuns at Romsey Abbey in Hampshire. According to a disposition she made in 1541, Jane Wadham had been a reluctant nun and "... having both in public and in private always protested against this seclusion, she conceived herself free from regular observance, and in that persuasion joined herself in matrimony with one John Foster 'per verba de presenti' intending to have the marriage solemnised as soon as she was free from her religion..." This John Foster had been chaplain and receiver at the abbey from where he had spied for both Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas Seymour. He also wrote a grovelling letter to Cromwell after the surrender of the abbey and his marriage; his concern was not that his wife might still be bound by her oath of celibacy, but that he as a priest had married believing that to be possible "but now by the noise of the people I perceive I have done amiss", and as soon as he realised that clerical marriage was against the king's wishes "I sent the woman to her friends three score miles from me".

He may have done so, but his new wife showed a fighting rather than a submissive spirit: Jane Wadham petitioned the king, and in 1541 he ordered the bishops of Durham, Rochester and Westminster and the Attorney General, Sir William Whorwood, to hold a commission of inquiry into the marriage with the authority to pronounce it valid if they found it to be so.

Presumably they did so pronounce, because the couple were later living with their children in Baddesley, where John Foster was the incumbent in 1543. Six years later the Court of Augmentations granted him the manor of Baddesley which had belonged to the Hospitallers. As he was also receiving £51 2s 0d. a year in fees and annuities out of Romsey in 1553 the couple had a comfortable income. The Fosters had three children one of whom, Jane Foster, married William Fleming son of the MP Sir Francis Fleming (1502–1558), who bought Broadlands in 1547 from Sir Thomas Seymour, to whom it had been granted from the spoils of the dissolved Romsey Abbey by King Edward VI, his nephew. From William and Jane Fleming Broadlands eventually descended through their daughter Frances Fleming to the de St Barbe family, and is currently (2016) the home of Lord Romsey, Norton Knatchbull, 8th Baron Brabourne, grandson of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma whose home Broadlands was. Katherine Wadham may also have escaped the convent life, as a Troilus Turberville (d.1574) of Whitchurch, great-nephew of James Turberville, Bishop of Exeter from 1555 to 1560, married a 'daughter of Wadham' and had five sons with her, the eldest of which was called Nicholas.

Thomas Cromwell took another of Wadham's sons into his household and eventually replaced Sir Nicholas as Governor of the Isle of Wight from 1538 to 1540. In 1520 Sir Nicholas attended the Field of the Cloth of Gold with King Henry VIII (1509–1547), his cousin and brother-in-law Sir John Seymour (1474–1536), and his uncle Sir Edward Wadham. In the same year, his brother William Wadham was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. In May 1521, at Bristol, both Sir Nicholas and Sir Edward Wadham were jurors at the indictment for treason of Edward Stafford, 3rd Duke of Buckingham. In 1524 Sir Nicholas received an honoury admission to the Middle Temple.

He was married thirdly to Isabel Baynham, daughter of Thomas Baynham and Alice Walwyn of Clearwell, Gloucestershire, widow of Sir Giles Brydges of Coberley (died 1511) and mother to Sir John Brydges, 1st Baron Chandos of Sudeley.

He married lastly Joan Lyte (d.1557) of Lytes Cary, now maintained by the National Trust (NT), widow of William Walton of Barton St. David, Somerset by whom she had five sons and two daughters. One of her daughters Elizabeth (sometimes called Isabel) married Christopher Cheverell, heir 'to the house of Chauntmarell', today Chantmarle Manor, Dorset. Dame Joan, Lady Wadham, who died in 1557, is buried and commemorated in the Church of St. Peter, Ilton Somerset.

Sir Nicholas Wadham (died 1542). There were no children by his third and fourth marriages.

John V Wadham (before 1531 – 1578)

John Wadham (died 1578), son to Sir Nicholas by his first marriage, who continued the main line of the family at Merifield and Edge from 1542, was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset in 1556, and is chiefly remembered for having been the father of Nicholas Wadham (1532–1609), co-founder of Wadham College, Oxford and for the surviving mural monument to his wife in Saint Winifred's Church, Branscombe, Devon on which appears his effigy and armorials.

His wife, Joan Tregarthen, was a daughter and co-heiress of John Tregarthen of Cornwall and widow of John Kelloway of Cullompton by whom she had fifteen children.

She brought John Wadham a considerable fortune, and some dignity, for she claimed royal descent from the Plantagenets on both sides.

Her children by both marriages, and both her husbands, appear with her on her funeral monument in Branscombe church.

John Wadham died in 1578, and was buried in Ilminster, where, however, no monument to his memory exists.

His widow retired to Edge, which seems to have become the dower house of the family, where she died in 1583. She lies buried in Saint Winifred's Church, Branscombe, Devon.

Nicholas II Wadham (1531–1609)

Nicholas Wadham, their only surviving son and heir, of Merifield and Edge was co-founder with his wife Dorothy Wadham of the college that bears their name, and was the last male descendant in direct succession of the main line of the Wadhams.

He was born in 1531, and according to all accounts was educated at Oxford, in most likelihood at Corpus Christi. He is probably the same 'Nicholas Wadham, of Brimpton, Somerset,' who entered himself at the Inner Temple on March 9, 1552, for although Brimpton never belonged to the Wadhams, Alvington in the same parish did, and the Sydenhams at Brimpton, or Brympton d'Evercy, were close neighbours, and related by marriage. A direct ancestor, Richard de Sydenham, had been raised to the bench as a judge of the Court of Common Pleas at the same time as Sir John II Wadham in 1388.

In 1555, at the age of twenty-three at St Botolph's Aldgate, Nicholas married Dorothy, daughter of Sir William Petre, of Ingatestone Hall and Writtle in Essex, a statesman "who, by carefully trimming his sails to the stormy politics of the age, contrived to retain the confidence and remain a privy councillor of monarchs so diverse as Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I. For his zeal when acting under Cromwell in the suppression of the monasteries he was rewarded by a knighthood, a seat in the Privy Council, made Secretary of State, and more substantially by the grant of a great estate in abbey lands amounting to twelve manors and four rectories (in Devon alone, he is thought to have owned over 36,000 acres). On the restoration of the Romish religion by Queen Mary he was uniquely careful to secure his spoils by a Papal Bull which he obtained from Pope Paul IV in 1555, professing that he was ready to employ his possessions for spiritual uses. The accession of Elizabeth no doubt relieved him from this obligation, and it does not appear that beyond eight fellowships which he founded at Exeter College in 1566, and some unimportant charities in Essex, any of his wealth was diverted to spiritual or charitable purposes."

Nicholas Wadham "entered the courtly life for a moderately long time", but he and Dorothy seem to have retired early on to lead a country life at Merifield where they lived with Nicholas's father. A curious letter was written to them at this time by Sir Amias Paulet, ambassador to France, and Puritan custodian in later times of Mary Stuart: "My good brother....I pray you commend me most heartily to my good father Wadham and tell him I trust to be so happy to see him again in Merryfield. My like commendations may not be forgotten to my good sister your wife....My sister must look to hear many strange stories from my wife if God give her leave to see England again, and in this meantime she desireth to be most heartily commended to her father, brother, and sister at Merryfield. And thus I comit you, my good brother, to the merciful tuition of the Almighty. From Tours."

The Wadhams were famous for the splendid hospitality they kept at Merryfield. "His hospital house" writes Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), "was an Inn at all times, a Court at Christmas"; and in the papers relating to his foundation are mentioned numerous gentlemen, his 'servants', some of whom were related to him by blood and no doubt served as pages in his retinue. His means were large, his estates being valued at £3000 a year, and the Wadhams were able to save £14,000 that, invested in land and other revenues, brought in a further income of £800 a year.

He served as a Commissioner of the peace, and in 1585 Nicholas Wadham was Sheriff of Somerset and Dorset. In 1588, at the time of the threat from the Spanish Armada he was a colonel in charge of local defences. In 1601 the rector of Saint Winifred's Church, Branscombe, Devon commented on "his gentle affability with all persons" and his generosity.

Nicholas and Dorothy died without progeny. Accordingly, Nicholas determined to spend on charitable purposes. In 1606 he founded almshouses for eight poor people, still used today (2016) by local pensioners, at Merryfield Lane, Ilton but the bulk of his savings was to be devoted to education. His original idea is said to have been to establish a college at Venice for the education of English Roman Catholics, but this is inconsistent with the Anglican tone of his statutes for the foundation; although Dorothy, like her brother Sir John Petre, 1st Baron Petre a patron of the composer William Byrd, probably remained a Catholic and was suspected of being a recusant.

Along with Edward Somerset, 4th Earl of Worcester, another of Byrd's patrons, Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham attended a poignant family gathering at the Petre's family home Ingatestone Hall at Christmas 1589 with William Byrd following the death of one of Lord Petre's children, and it is probable that his music would have been played at their funerals.

Their portraits, painted in 1595, hang in the warden's lodgings at Wadham College, Oxford.

Dorothy Wadham, between 1609 and her death in 1618 often signed her letters "from my house at Edge" and to her Warden and Fellows "Your very loving foundresse", and has the distinction of being the first woman who was not a member of the Royal Family or titled aristocracy to found a college at Oxford or Cambridge.

The residue of Nicholas's estates, in default of any male issue, passed to the heirs of his father, that is to his three sisters and their descendants:

Joan Wadham, Lady Strangways died aged seventy in 1603 and is buried in a beautiful altar tomb at the entrance to Bristol Cathedral with her second husband Sir John Young (c. 1519 – 1589), builder in 1568 of the Great House in Bristol where Queen Elizabeth I stayed on her visit to Bristol in 1574, when she knighted John Young, and of which only the Red Lodge, finished by Joan Wadham in 1590, survives today as the Red Lodge Museum, Bristol. The arms of Young impaling Wadham are carved in oak above the entrance porch to The Great Oak Room. In later life, she was involved in the Case of the Swans.

Her fame rests on a remarkable escape from a horrific death and her singular importance to the survival of the Wyndham family. She and Sir John are buried in the Wyndham aisle of the Church of St Decuman, Watchet.

Wyndham/Fox-Strangways

Following the death of Dorothy Wadham in 1618, Edge passed into the families of the sisters and co-heiresses of Nicholas Wadham; namely, the Wyndham family of Orchard Wyndham in Somerset, later Earls of Egremont at Petworth House in Sussex, and the Fox-Strangways of Melbury House, Dorset, later Earls of Ilchester, who retained ownership until 1933 and in the interval let Edge to a series of tenant farmers.

The Fox-Strangways and the Wyndhams of Orchard Wyndham owned the manor of Wadham into the twentieth century, and the Wyndhams still retain ownership of the Wadham family's Merryfield estate and the manor of Ilton today (2016).

Langdon

Edge was at one point occupied as tenants by the Langdons, of Chard in Somerset, and was described in the eighteenth century as 'derelict in appearance'.

Richards

Early in the twentieth century it was tenanted by a Mr. Richards, of Sidmouth, who was born in Branscombe.

Masters

Edge was finally purchased in 1933 by Captain Frank Masters, an architect, in a decayed state and with the former chapel being used as a dairy. He began extensive renovations in 1935, but did not live to complete the work.

Blackburn

The renovations begun by Captain Masters were completed by Robert Blackburn, an aeronautical engineer.

Robinson

In 1996 Edge was acquired by retired businessman (Michael) Silvan(us) Robinson CBE and his wife June, (née Wood), a former Conservative mayor of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames.

Before 1988 Silvan Robinson was President of the Shell International Trading Company, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, and was awarded a CBE in the 1988 New Year Honours.

The Robinsons established a link with Wadham College and in June 2010, to mark the 400th anniversary of the College's foundation, they entertained Sir Neil Chalmers, Warden of Wadham College and a number of the Fellows at Edge.

The Warden and his wife stayed the night in Dorothy Wadham's bedroom. "Dorothy is quite a cult figure at the College" stated Mr Robinson "and our visitors were delighted to see where she'd come from".