Walter Devereux (1411-1459)

Sir Walter Devereux (1411 – 22 April 1459) of Bodenham and Weobley was a loyal supporter of Richard of York, 3rd Duke of York during the Wars of the Roses. He was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1449 to 1451.

Walter Devereux was born in 1411 in Bodenham, Herefordshire to a senior Walter Devereux (or Deverois, 1387–1420) and his wife Elizabeth Bromwich.

His maternal grandparents were Thomas Bromwich, Lord Justice of Ireland and Catherine Oldcastle. His paternal grandparents were an elder Walter Devereux (c. 1361–1402) and Agnes Crophull. Agnes was mother of Sir Thomas Parr by a second marriage to John Parr of Kendal; and paternal grandmother of William Parr, 1st Baron Parr of Kendal, a noted courtier under Edward IV of England and grandfather of Queen Catherine Parr. Agnes Crophull's third husband was John Merbury, the father of Walter Devereux's wife by a previous marriage as indicated below.

The Devereux arms were: Argent a fesse gules, in chief three torteaux.

Walter Devereux married Elizabeth Merbury in 1427. She was a daughter of Sir John Merbury,Chief Justice of South Wales and his wife Alice Pembridge. They had the following children:

Walter Devereux was 8 years old at the death of his father in 1419. Following his marriage in 1427, he established his first residence at Bodenham, the core of his Devereux family estates. On 8 July 1427 Thomas Barton, Thomas Smith and Thomas Lightfoot, granted John and Agnes Merbury the manors of Bonington, West Leake and Treswell; 3 messuages and 5 virgates of land in Thrumpton in the county of Nottingham; the manors of Hemington and Braunstone and the advowson of the church of Braunstone in the county of Leicester; and a third part of the manors of Market Rasen and East Rasen in the county of Lincoln. They were to be held for the lives of John and Agnes, and after their decease remain to Walter Devereux and Elizabeth, his wife, and the heirs of their bodies. On the Subsidy Rolls of 1428 Walter Devereux held 1/3 of half a fee in Byford, and ½ fee in Bodenham. On 30 July 1428 Maurice Taylor, Roger Haynes, Richard Baby and William Mimm granted to Walter Devereux and his uncles, John and Richard Devereux, all the lands and tenements they held in Bradley and their fees of Weobley, Dilwyn, and King’s Pyon in Herefordshire.