Castle Aching

[Nearholmer]

25 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

exhibited the wit, talent, or good looks associated with either the Irish or the Jews

 

That sounds more like an example of the author's positive prejudices, or delight in courting controversy, than an objective argument.

[St Enodoc]

55 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Rudolf holds Hampton

TMI

[Donw]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

Not really.

The English had already established a class system, from King down to slaves.

What the Normans did was to exploit it with ruthless efficiency - William was exceptionally good at that.

 

True but I believe the old top layer was replaced with Normans who took over ownership of the lands, so there was a new Aristocracy

 

47 minutes ago, webbcompound said:

i have always been intrigued by the idea of lines "dying out" (as was referred to earlier in regard to the Percy family. this usually means no male heir. The idea that descent is through the male line is of course completely risible as the only surefire descent is through the female line. The question of Victoria's paternity is an example of this problem.

 

Isn't that the male conceit that the important lineage is the male line.  Of course there may have been cases where no heir had been provided so the wife 'arranged' to become pregnant but the pretence was made that it was the husbands child.  Estates were often entailed whereby the estate and the title could only be inherited by someone with a connection through the male line so if there was no son a brother or cousin would succeed.

 

Don

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

1 hour ago, Compound2632 said:

 

A.N. Wilson discusses this, and also Albert's rumoured illegitimacy. While he appears to accept that Victoria was not the daughter of the Duke of Kent, he is sceptical that Sir John Conroy, her mother's secretary, was her father, just as he doubts that Albert's father was the Jewish Baron von Mayern, since so few of Victoria and Albert's descendants have exhibited the wit, talent, or good looks associated with either the Irish or the Jews [A.N. Wilson, The Victorians (Hutchinson, 2002)].

 

All of which strengthens the Duke of Norfolk's title to the throne of England (but not Scotland).

 

Victoria isn't the daughter of Kent? I suggest that given the clear signs of the Hanoverian pop eyes in her physiognomy that that is unlikely. A feature which still "pops" up in the British Royals.  

 

The main problem is not legitimacy but that the general displeasure with which the sons of George III were regarded, meant that if the British monarchy wasn't to go the way of the French the establishment had to find a way of salvaging its reputation. This they did by marrying the rather closeted Victoria to a minor German prince who also had the misfortune to carry with him that German gene for taken themselves far too seriously. Given Victoria's obviously spirited enjoyment of the pleasures of procreation , plus her own German background, perhaps someone less genetically the archetypal German could have been found. Still Albert was actually fairly intelligent which made a change from Victoria marrying the usual clothes horse that constituted the preferred intellectual attainment of the European royalty.

 

It is a real pity that, because of that grief spiral Victoria went into after Albert's death, she didn't abdicate which would have meant her heir Edward wouldn't have had so much idle time to vegetate into a selfish, libertine old boor by the time he ascended to the throne. Edward had really seriously good diplomatic skills and might have made a major contribution to the role of the monarchy if he had become king much earlier. As it was the seriously humourless George V had the horrible task of once more salvaging the reputation of the monarchy which his grandmother had had almost 73 years before - only to have his successor undo it all again in 1936. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.       

[St Enodoc]

6 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

the seriously humourless George V

I suppose that with the Kaiser and the Tsar as cousins he had some reason to be humourless.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

48 minutes ago, St Enodoc said:

I suppose that with the Kaiser and the Tsar as cousins he had some reason to be humourless.

 

Oh yes - there's a splendid book The Three Emperors by Miranda Carter which goes into whole relationship between the three and its causes and fall out. George V didn't really have much chance for a sense of humour to develop. I suspect he would have been a lot happier if his older brother Albert hadn't died. Now there was a chap with just the right amount of intellectual capacity to have found a suitable job as a standard lamp or a pliable monarch.  

[St Enodoc]

8 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

Oh yes - there's a splendid book The Three Emperors by Miranda Carter which goes into whole relationship between the three and its causes and fall out. George V didn't really have much chance for a sense of humour to develop. I suspect he would have been a lot happier if his older brother Albert hadn't died. Now there was a chap with just the right amount of intellectual capacity to have found a suitable job as a standard lamp or a pliable monarch.  

Haven't read that but I did watch a doco called Royal Cousins at War a couple of years ago which I found very interesting, not least for all the archive footage. I was especially struck by the facial resemblance between the three.

[RedGemAlchemist]

Fun fact: my own family like used to be landed gentry until my great great great great great great... Until a distant ancestor gambled it all away. 

 

And then on my maternal Grandad's side I'm distantly related to Johnny Cash, so a different type of nobility altogether. 

Edited March 15, 2020 by RedGemAlchemist
Clarifying which Grandad I meant

[DonB]

According to my cousin who is the family archivist (ie no one else can be bothered!) Our family tree stretches back to American President Garfield.

He is my 7th cousin, 5 times removed, I'm told (how these relationships are calculated is beyond me! )

 

WIKI :-"James Abram Garfield was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881 until his death by assassination six and a half months later. He is the only sitting member of the United States House of Representatives to be elected to the presidency."

 

Seems he was shot by a disgruntled fellow politician who had not been offered a job in government. (The right to bear arms... has anyone warned Trump?) 

[Hroth]

10 minutes ago, DonB said:

Seems he was shot by a disgruntled fellow politician who had not been offered a job in government. (The right to bear arms... has anyone warned Trump?) 

 

The main problem with tipping Trump the Black Spot is that his VP will then take over.

Mike Pence as President?  The cure might be worse than the disease!

 

Even if he's only in until the next election, there's still enough time to cause plenty of damage.

 

 

According to family folklore, our family has some sort of link to George Stephenson.....

 

Back on track! 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

3 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

The main problem with tipping Trump the Black Spot is that his VP will then take over.

Mike Pence as President?  The cure might be worse than the disease!

 

Even if he's only in until the next election, there's still enough time to cause plenty of damage.

 

 

According to family folklore, our family has some sort of link to George Stephenson.....

 

Back on track! 

 

There is something very very strange about Pence - he has the deadest eyes I've seen in any politician. That plus his refusal on religious grounds to allow himself to be alone in a room with any woman other than his wife. All that tells me is that he may have problems of self-control rather than any religious conviction.  

[CKPR]

My dad is apparently  very distantly related to the Earl of Listowel and we might have been in line to inherit the crumbling pile that was (is ?) Listowel Castle on account of a somewhat weak male lineage over in Ireland. However, the penultimate Earl had a late in life  marriage / dalliance with a lady somewhere in south east Asia and a few years ago, I read that a subsequent court ruling in favour of said lady's son had apparently ruled out my already very remote chances of inheriting an Irish peerage. Ho hum.

Edited March 15, 2020 by CKPR

[Regularity]

12 hours ago, Donw said:

 

True but I believe the old top layer was replaced with Normans who took over ownership of the lands, so there was a new Aristocracy.

New people, but not a new system, which is the impression you initially gave.

in fact, William wisely kept some English nobles, until the northern uprising.

[brianusa]

Who needs railways?  This site and topics keep getting more and more interesting

        Brian.

[teaky]

10 hours ago, Regularity said:

New people, but not a new system, which is the impression you initially gave.

in fact, William wisely kept some English nobles, until the northern uprising.

Plus one bishop: Wulfstan of Worcester.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Well I'm related to my parents and they're related to theirs' and apparently this distinguished line of relationships is an ancient one. I am led to believe that we had a particularly notorious trilobite in our ancestry.   

[Buhar]

The Normans were assimilated Vikings and when they came here they carried on in the same vein.  Many landowning Scots families have Norman roots and of course the liberator of Scotland was one Robert de Brus.

 

Alan

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

20 hours ago, Hroth said:

According to family folklore, our family has some sort of link to George Stephenson.....

 

Back on track! 

 

Would that link be - three link chain, bell & hook, Albert, ABC, link and pin, Norwegian, SA3, Willison etc. or another type?

 

 

[ianathompson]

On 14/03/2020 at 22:29, Compound2632 said:

 

A typical Doomsday Book entry says something along the lines of "Rudolf holds Hampton; Edwin held it in King Edward's time."

 

Coming rather late to the party but the impact of the Normans in the North was quite apparent

The Gammar School had a copy of the Domesday entry for Batley along the lines of,

 

In the time of Edward the manor was worth 20/6, now it is worth 1/4.

 

Wouldn't mind if I could aquire the manor for £1.03p today!

 

Ian t

[webbcompound]

10 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 I am led to believe that we had a particularly notorious trilobite in our ancestry.   

 So now, sadly, you are reduced to scurrying around under rotting logs.

*to attempt (probably a futile effort) to avoid fututre pedantry it should be noted that exactly which of the arthropods is the closest relative to the trilobite is a matter of dispute more virulent than the debate on the efficacy of Webb's compounds

[drmditch]

Re: Arthropods and Webb Compounds.

I do have a concern that our human self-satisfaction with our evolutionary form, social abilities, and body structure have blinded us to the absurdity of carrying round a heavy weight on top of a long pole.

Surely a multi-limbed structure with the heavy bits in the middle and, perhaps, sensory organs on stalks of variable lengths would make much more sense.

Of course an exo-skeleton with it's attendant weight issues would have had to be discarded.

 

Personally, I think that Octopus would make a good candidate for a dominant species, once we have eliminated ourselves by our greed and arrogance, or been eliminated by our inability to manage our liability to parasite infection.

 

Perhaps if Octopus learned how to become a social animal?

 

As regards Webb, irrespective of some of his developed arrogance, it is significant that so many excellent locomotive engineers were trained under him.

 

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Someone with a facility for maths and a bit of spare time could probably demonstrate that 99% of the population of the UK is in some way descended from somebody who arrived in a boat from St Valery sur Somme in 1066, and likewise descended from somebody who was already within these shores before then.

 

My father’s family definitely has a strong line to the invaders, but it seems to be to a minor sword-swinger, who got given a couple of small parcels of land and founded (a fair bet with a Saxon wife) a small stone quarry on one plot and a modest farm on the other, which between them kept his direct heirs out of mischief, and very much out of wealth, for hundreds of years thereafter.

 

PS: I googled, and someone has already done the maths, and given the number of intervening generations, not only Is anyone who has any british-ancestry-dna in them of part-Norman descent, but they are part-descended from William the Conquerer himself!

Edited March 16, 2020 by Nearholmer

[TheQ]

As a Stewart descendent  I have somewhat stronger ties to Alan fitz Flaad than Willie the Bastard

[Talltim]

On 14/03/2020 at 21:06, Clearwater said:

Isn’t Mr Darcy described as having an income of £10,000 a year?  An incredible sum in Austen’s day which somewhat implies he is slightly new money as he isn’t titled.  I’m assuming that in Austen’s time, as now, those who’ve brought their own furniture (an Alan Clark quote on Heseltine I think) are looked down on by those who’ve inherited? Ah the English class system....

Terry Pratchett touches on the furniture thing in Men at Arms, Captain Vimes realises that the aristocracy are rich because they never have to buy anything.

https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Sam_Vimes_Theory_of_Economic_Injustice

[Nearholmer]

Having just skimmed that, I’m pretty sure it’s lifted almost direct from Marx, considerably softened, of course. He used the plight of factory workers in the boot trade in an extended example (all his examples are massively extended!) and made this point among several others, although I can’t remember in which of his (massively extended, with so many examples as to drive the reader catatonic) essays.