Webbery, Alverdiscott

Webbery (anciently Wibbery) is an historic manor in the parish of Alverdiscott in North Devon, England.

The manor of WIBERIE is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the first of the twelve Devonshire holdings of "Nicholas the Bowman" (Nicolaus Balistarius or Archibalistarius), a servant of King William the Conqueror and one of the Devon Domesday Book tenants-in-chief. His tenant was Roger Goad. He was also a tenant-in-chief in Warwickshire. Nicholas was the king's artilleryman, whose role was "the captain or officer in charge of the stone and missile discharging engines used in sieges". He was also known as Nicholas de la Pole. At some time between 1095 and 1100 he exchanged his manor of Ailstone in Warwickshire for the manor of Plymtree in Devon, held by St Peter's Abbey, Gloucester.

Most of his landholdings later descended to the feudal barony of Plympton.

During the reign of King Henry III (1216-1272), Webbery was held by Richard Poleyne.

Webbery then passed to the de Wibbery family which as was usual during the reign of King Edward I (1272-1307) adopted its surname from its seat. Simon de Wibbery is recorded as being lord of the manor in 1314. It remained the seat of this family for several generations until the male line failed and it passed to the Lippingcott family, by marriage to the heiress Jane Wibbery, daughter of John Wibbery and sister and co-heiress of William Wibbery.

The arms of Wibbery are uncertain. Pole (d.1635) gives them as: Argent, a fess embattled counter-embattled sable between three caterfoils gules, yet many 19th century sources give them as: A chevron between three mermaids, but without the provision of any evidence to ancient sources, and curiously without mention or discussion of Pole's contradictory blazon. The Wibbery family had become extinct in the male line before the production of the Heraldic Visitations of Devon, and thus the arms are not recorded in that source. The Lippingcott family quartered these mermaid arms, which the above sources identify as the arms of Wibbery, yet other sources, including Carew in his Scroll of Arms (1588), state the mermaid arms quartered by Lippingcott to be the arms of Gough of Cornwall (alias Goff, Goffe, etc), an heiress of which family the Lippincotts married and whose arms they were thus entitled to quarter. (Phillip Lippingcott (d.1567) great-grandson of the heiress Jane Wibbery, married Alice Gough, a daughter and co-heiress of Richard Gough of "Kilkham in Cornwall" (Vivian, p.531)) (Gough of "Kilkeham" (Kilkhampton?) in Cornwall, per Joseph Hollands Collection of Arms, 1579, quoted in Carew's Scroll of Arms, 1588, no.62.

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