General Chat

The danger of beleiving all you read in history, i have come to learn
can be foolishness on the part of any one who believes old
documents family or otherwise to be infalable-----------
It appears a practice in many noble families at one given
period, to claim to have decended from fairies, and elphins ,and
had monks record such in their family trees.Others had theirs
tracing back to saints,or to reigning kings, in short as it benifitted
the individuals thus they had their monks record. In fact one
of the kings of england had his heralds show his pedigree going
back to king David in Isreal------------------So from what i have learned
i would say most family trees and an accurate line of decendancy
is a bit dodgey before 1500 A D
If anybody tells you different-send 'em to me
have a good nite all

colin F

P S perhaps the more learned historians among you would
like to share your findings and opinions
C F

On WDYTYA they had, I believe Matthew Pinsett who was descended from a 'Title', they showed a family tree a descendant of this 'Title' had done a couple of hundred years ago - and it went back to Adam & Eve!!

maggie

come on all you good people on this thread
ime awaiting your learned veiws

colin

just waiting to get Eves birth cert and find her on census,then will look for the marriage,,,,,,,,,then maybe I can get back via her parents,,,,,,,,,)))

Not just the far distant past either Colin.
I have a letter in which my grandad says his father told him he had re-married on 26 December 1926.
I haven't been able to find the remarriage of my g grandfather either 2 years before or after this date, and when he died, the house went straight to my grandfather, not g grandfather's 'wife'.

maggie

i thank you all for your comments and are suprised
that more have not joined in concidering it is
suposed to be a suject close to all our hearts
and interlectually stimulating

have a goodnite all
colin F

OK Colin, let's see if the following spurs anything.

The big problem is that history tends to get written by the winners, and is more often than not given a spin to discredit the losers. Two examples:

1. Was Edward II actually murdered in Berkeley Castle, or was it all a scam aimed at discrediting Edward's wife and Roger Mortimer?

2. Was Richard III a baddie or was he smeared after he blew it at Bosworth Field by the Tudors to help bolster their VERY shaky claims to the English throne. If, and it is a very big if, the 2 sons of Edward IV were murdered, it was just as much in Henry VII's interests to have them put down.

Dingbat - do you mean to say that Edward II killled HIMSELF in such a horrible fashion ;-)))

Was Richard II really starved to death or despatched more quickly? I can see why Henry would have balked at killing an annointed king, perhaps just 'forgetting' to feed the king let him off the hook?

History - so many 'ifs' - would love to get a time machine and go back and see some of it for myself - but would have to agree with Dingbat - much of the history we read tends to be written by the 'winners' and is as subject to spin as modern politics.

Nope. A current theory is he wasn't killed at all. "England's Greatest Traitor" by Ian Mortimer, is one book that explores this theory, and there are at least 2 others.

If the claims are correct, Edward was taken first to Corfe Castle, and from there to Ireland. After the death of Roger Mortimer (not an ancestor of the book's author), Edward was set free. He spent the rest of his life in Italy, and actually met Edward III in what is today Belgium.

The red hot poker claims appear to have been invented by cronies of roger Mortimer's biggest enemy the Earl of Lancaster, and were first circulated several years after the alleged murder of Edward II.

Another author to explore the subject is Alison Weir - "Isabella, She-Wolf of France, Queen of England".

All history is open to debate. One of the first things that I was told when I went to university was that, 'there is no such thing as historical truth'

The mortimers helped the earl of oxford to
do down Robert de Welles and finnised it off on his
son Robert de Wellynge in late 1300 early 1400
placing his mother as abess in local convant
Wellynge and welles were the same family often spelt differently and intermittently---it seemed
young robert had been tricked out of his lands
and tittles-------------
still he went to live in salop where they held lands
but there was as big a villians then as now
my point

thanks for your participation
colin

wishing you all good nite
bed time
colin F

I've been out so not able to respond before now.

First of all the trees going back to Adam and Eve or fabled Norse Gods or Jesus and Mary Magdalene (as inspired by the Da Vinci Code) are out there on the net. They've been lovingly compiled by people who are convinced they are real but the vast majority of genealogists do not go down those paths.

It is worth mentioning at this point that the LDS (Mormons) do aim to trace their lineages back through Biblical times to Adam and Eve but we don't have to agree with their earlier ideas to find their later records useful.

Indeed if you manage to get your family tree back to the early 1600s and if parish records still exist in the villages where they lived, then you are doing very well. Some land records and wills exist enabling some ordinary families to be traced further.

If you manage to find a link to a noble or royal family within the parish records period you may then find that genealogy takes on a whole new meaning.

My 8x great grandfather was Sir Henry Clinton-Fiennes b. 1597 d.1641. The line back to him is legitimate and well documented. His dates are well within parish records and his life is well recorded. I have seen letters written to him by King James I and read Henry's memoirs.

His father and grandfather were Earls of Lincoln. Their lives are historical facts and his grandfather was Queen Elizabeth's Lord Admiral.

The Clintons and Fiennes were big landowners. They married women from other wealthy families. Records exist of these arrangements because marriages were contracts between families rather than love matches.

Using well documented records I've discovered that numerous of the families which married into the main lines were themselves of royal descent. I have several ways back to King Edward III. I presume you are not then disputing the list of kings back from him?

I have heard it debated what happens if any of the links isn't what it seems and one of the royals was illegitimate?
Well in many ways the earlier you go the less it matters. I am also descended from siblings of most of the early Royal ancestors I have found, so if one turns out to be wrong then one of the others leads back a generation.

A lot of professional genealogists spend a lot of time turning museums/old books and documents and all sorts of records upside down in the hunt for the tiniest scrap of truth. On the medieval forums they debate endlessly about minutae of evidence and as a result any pedigrees produced by any of them are often more accurate than recent trees depending perhaps on just one or two pieces of evidence.

If you can get a line leading back to early royals then you will find that these lead all over Europe and back into well known people like Charlemagne. In turn his earliest ancestry with documentary evidence goes back to a man living in 380 AD

Other lines going via Islamic Spain and through early French Kings are still not proven.

I am descended from Edward II and Isabella but I am also descended from the Mortimers. One of the interesting things about having a huge medieval tree is finding links between ancestors who in their day were enemies.

I may be wrong but your comments about noble family trees sound ever so slightly like sour grapes. Are you just annoyed that you haven't found one?

I apologise if not but I do wonder what you have been studying to bring you to your conclusions.

Sue

Wow Sue - we must be cousins!
I am descended from Edward III (and also Henry VII) Medieval genealogy is a lot of fun, but relationships get a bit complicated sometimes.

xx mick

Hi "cousin" Mick

LOL

I think until someone finds their own medieval link it is easy to dismiss it all as some fantasy. I am well aware that in Victorian times many people paid very dubious "genealogists" to research their family trees and there are a lot of works of fiction out there.

What I hadn't ever realised or thought about was how tightly knit the nobility was in the Middle Ages and how well documented their lives were. They couldn't marry even quite distant cousins but, because they needed to work out relationships and make sure of land contracts, their family histories are often far easier to trace than recent ones.

Then, because they married within their own social group they were normally marrying people who shared the same distant ancestors. So if you find one medieval link you've probably got dozens of ways back to all sorts of interesting people.

We aren't all deluded and fantasists. There are also a lot of others on Genesreunited with the same sort of medieval trees (judging by the Hot Matches I get).

Sue
x

dear --dear
my observation on history and on family history seems to be completely misunderstood--
I was simpley amazeed on reading the History
of wild edric -- how people had funny ideas as to
their geaneology back then--
for the benifit of all who miss-understood--the only
ancestor i can be sure of is Noah (as in the Noachin floods) and he'll do me---

colin F

I'll have you know I am a decendant of elves and I have the pointy ears to prove it pmsl

Funny you should mention that
my nose keeps growing every time i speake

colin

pmsl

you must be a decendant of pinoccio then Colin

make sure you stay away from naked flames lol

I felt scorched last nite boyo

colin
wrexham