William Wadham (died 1452)

His father, Sir John Wadham, was a Justice of the Common Pleas from 1389 to 1398, during the reign of King Richard II; one of many Devonians of the period described by Thomas Fuller in his Worthies of England as seemingly "innated with a genius to study law.

On the death of Margaret Chiseldon, he married Katherine Payne, the widow of his brother-in-law's uncle, John Stourton (died 1438), of the manors of Preston Plucknett and Brympton d'Evercy near Yeovil, Somerset.

[5] Sir William lies buried with his mother in the transept traditionally known as 'the Wadham aisle' in the Church of St Mary, Ilminster, built in spectacular Perpendicular English Gothic style from the local Hamstone, of which there is every reason to believe he was the builder.

Sir William was the eldest surviving son and heir of the judge, Sir John Wadham of Merryfield and Edge, ancestor to Queen Jane Seymour, King Edward VI and the Seymour Dukes of Somerset, Justice of the Common Pleas from 1389 to 1398: "All I have met with him further" wrote his Devonshire biographer John Prince "is this encomium; 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.

William Wadham's mother Joan Wrothesley was a sister of Sir Hugh Wrottesley of Blore, founder member and eighteenth Knight of the Garter in 1348.

[9] Sir William's father, 'the judge', had acquired land in Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Gloucestershire, which was valued at £82 per annum in an incomplete survey of 1412, and at about £115 in his inquisition post mortem.