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The Ancestry of the British monarchy has long attracted interest because the monarchs of Britain trace their lineage from some of the lines.

The obsession with the Ancestry of the ancient dynasties has long been an obsession of historians. Fascination with the ancestry of ancient dynasties is called "progonoplexia" and is not a recent phenomenon. It has been made popular by the television series Who Do You Think You Are?" along with numerous websites and computer programs to build family trees. Horsa and Hengest were two semi-legendary chieftans suggested to have led a fifth century, Anglo-Saxon conquest of England. Thomas Jefferson proposed placing replicas of these two characters on the Great Seal of the United States.

Overview

Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote a legendary chronology of the kings and legendary kings of Britain in his Historia Regum Britanniae written around 1136 CE. Along with written histories, ancestries can also be studied through genealogies; lists of names in various manuscripts. Ancestries include the Ancestry of the kings of Wessex and the Ancestry of the kings of Mercia. Scholarly analysis suggests the early part of some versions are largely an invention of the 8th and 9th centuries. They provides lines of names stretching from Godulf Geoting, presumably ruler of a kingdom before Woden to Eanfrith, Aldfrið or Pybba and onwards. They have variations in a number of Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies.

Many American names can be traced from British ancestry, such as the founders of Yale University. Rodney Horace Yale said that their ancestry "was derived from the name of the district of Yale, in the lordship of Bromfield and Yale." The native Yales of Wales were descended from British, Italian and Norman lines, without any evidence of Saxon ancestry.

Historical record

An early name on record outside of the legendary genealogies is called Creoda mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry 519 and in the B, C, and D version, although not listed as a king. Creoda has been deleted from some of the genealogies. Cearl is the first king of Mercia recorded by Bede in his Ecclesiastical History. Nicholas Brooks has suggested that a different Creoda (or Crida) was the founder and the first ruler of the House of Mercia. Paul de Rapin suggested Crida arrived around 584 CE "in Britain with a numerous army of Angles, and makes large conquests". According to the Chronicle, Crida died along with Ceawlin and Cwichelmin 594 CE. They are never mentioned as kings but Barbara Yorke suggests "their names follow the 'C' alliteration favoured by West Saxon æthelings".

Crida was succeeded by Pyba and Penda who were thought to have come from a family named the Iclingas, of which the legendary king Icel may have been a member, possibly living between 450 and 525 CE. The genealogy of the Iclingas details their family descent from Woden.

Ancient geneaologies

The list of names in the different genealogies give the following pedigrees:

      Semi-Legendary kings after Godulf Geoting
      Kings in the historical record

Ancestry of the kings of Lindsey

Manuscripts including the Genealogia Lindisfarorum contain references to names from the Kingdom of Lindsey, a settlement in the northeast of Britain that rose to prominence in the early years of settlement by the Angles. Little is known of the Kingdom and the people are not recorded participating in the wars of the seventh and eighth centuries. Frank Stenton suggested the Caedbaed may have ruled around 570 CE. He suggests "the hint of early intercourse between Angles and Britons given by the name of King Caedbaed is strengthened by the fact that Lindsey itself is a British name". Cueldgils is another compound name in the list. The word Lindsey is formed from a Roman compound "Lindum Colonia" from which Lincoln, England derives it's name.

Ancestry of the kings of Anglia

The Kingdom of Lindsey was bounded to the southeast by Middle Anglia, a province connected to Mercia through early histories.

Ancestry of the kings of Mercia

The origins of the kings of Mercia have been connected with the foundation of Medeshamstede, which is modern Peterborough. Nottingham is another large, modern city that sits at the heart of the territory once known as Mercia.

In early times, a shadowy overlord ruled in the area called Offa, a King who constructed the Offa's Dyke earthworks. Ann Dornier compiled a large collection of evidence available about the Mericans in a book called Mercian Studies in 1977, providing a wealth of information about the culture and history of the Kingdom. This has been expanded in recent years with exploration of issues such as the roles of women in ancient society by Paul Stafford. The Ancestry of the kings of Mercia suggests that the territory developed from "the accretion of other groups claiming a common ancestry". The Church has had an important role in compiling the records of these times, with dates claimed for the conversion to Christianity of Peada in around 653.

Ancestry of the kings of Wessex

Two manuscripts from the 10th century (called CCCC 183 and Tiberius V, or simply C and T) include an addition: a pedigree for King Ine of Wessex that traces his ancestry from Cerdic, the semi-legendary founder of the Wessex state, and hence from Woden. This addition probably reflects the growing influence of Wessex under Ecgbert, whose family claimed descent from a brother of Ine. Pedigrees are also preserved in several regnal lists dating from the reign of Æthelwulf and later but seemingly based on a late-8th or early 9th century source or sources. Finally, later interpolations (which were added by 892) to both Asser's Vita Ælfredi regis Angul Saxonum and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle preserve Wessex pedigrees extended beyond Cerdic and Woden to Adam.

Scholars have long noted discrepancies in the Wessex pedigree tradition. The pedigree is at odds with the earlier Anglian collection and contains four additional generations consisting of doublets which when expressed with patronymics would have resulted in the uniform triple alliteration that is common in Anglo-Saxon poetry but would have been difficult for a family to maintain over a number of generations and is unlike known Anglo-Saxon naming practices.

Ancestry of the kings of Kent

Bede, in his Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, completed in 731, includes pedigrees for the kings of Kent and of the East Angles, tracing the former back to the 5th century warlord Hengist and both back to the Germanic god Woden. Vespasian B Vi contains a list that ends in the year 812. The Anglian collection provides pedigrees for Deira, Bernicia, Mercia, Lindsey, Kent and East Anglia, tracing all from Woden, made son of an otherwise unknown Frealaf.

Ancestry of the kings of West Saxony

The ancestry of the the West Saxon kings can be found in the Chronicle, Ecclesiastical History and other charters shoing titles of subregulus or rex. The main kings of West Saxony included a line from Cynegils to Baldred, Ceawlin and Cutha or Cuthwulf. Cuthwulf is also noted to have a son called Cuthwine. The son of Cynegils was called Cwichelm, who is known from the Chronicle to have died in the same year as Crida.

See also

• List of legendary kings of Britain

References

1. Peter (of Ickham) (1885). The Genealogy of the Kings of Britain: From Brutus to the Death of Alfred, Tr. from a Norman-French Ms. in the Library If Trinity College, Cambridge. Priv. Print. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
2. George Russell French (1841). The ancestry of ... queen Victoria, and of ... prince Albert. pp. 375–. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
3. Eviatar Zerubavel (9 November 2011). Ancestors and Relatives:Genealogy, Identity, and Community: Genealogy, Identity, and Community. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-977395-4. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
4. Geoffrey (of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph); Michael D. Reeve; Neil Wright (2007). The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of De Gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae). Boydell & Brewer. pp. 68–. ISBN 978-1-84383-206-5. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
5. ^ Stenton, F. M. (Frank Merry), "Lindsey and its Kings", Essays presented to Reginald Lane Poole, 1927, pp. 136-150, reprinted in Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England: Being the Collected Papers of Frank Merry Stenton : Edited by Doris Mary Stenton, Oxford, 1970, pp. 127-137
6. Zaluckyj, Sarah & Feryok, Marge. Mercia: The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Central England (2001) ISBN 1-873827-62-8
7. Robert Dennis Fulk; Robert E. Bjork; John D. Niles (5 April 2008). Klaeber's Beowulf: And the Fighting at Finnsburg. University of Toronto Press. pp. 292–. ISBN 978-0-8020-9567-1. Retrieved 18 November 2012.
8. Rodney Horace Yale (1900). Yale genealogy and history of Wales: the British kings and princes, life of Owen Glyndwr, biographies of Governor Elihu Yale, for whom Yale University was named, Linus Yale, Sr. ... and other noted persons (1980 reprint ed.). D.R. Yale. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
9. Thomas A. Bredehoft (2001). Textual Histories: Readings in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. University of Toronto Press. pp. 167–. ISBN 978-0-8020-4850-9. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
10. Gordon J. Copley (1954). The conquest of Wessex in the sixth century. Phoenix House. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
11. E. B. Fryde; D. E. Greenway; S. Porter (23 February 1996). Handbook of British Chronology. Cambridge University Press. pp. 21–. ISBN 978-0-521-56350-5. Retrieved 20 November 2012. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
12. Swanton, Michael (editor) (1996). Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Routledge. p. 66 footnote 2. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
13. "The Genealogist"
14. ^ Nicholas Brooks (2 August 2003). Anglo-Saxon Myths: State and Church, 400-1066: State and Church, 400-1066. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 67–. ISBN 978-1-85285-154-5. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
15. Rapin de Thoyras (Paul, M.) (1747). The history of England. J. and P. Knapton. pp. 5–. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
16. ^ Dr Barbara Yorke (1990). Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England, p. 143. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-16639-3. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
17. The Archaeological Journal, Volume 91, page 138, Published by British Archaeological Association, Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 1935.
18. ^ Frank Merry Stenton (1971). Anglo-Saxon England: Reissue with a New Cover, p. 49. Oxford University Press. pp. 49–. ISBN 978-0-19-280139-5. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
19. ^ Michelle P. Brown, Carol A. Farr; Carol Ann Farr (1 May 2005). Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom In Europe. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-7765-1. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
20. Sisam, pp. 290-292
21. Sisam, p. 291
22. Sisam, pp. 294-297
23. Sisam, pp. 297-298
24. R. W. Chambers, Beowulf, an Introduction, Cambridge: University Press, 1921, p. 316
25. Sisam, pp. 298,300-307
26. Sisam, pp. 288
27. Sisam, pp. 287-290

External Links

Genealogia Lindisfarorum in Chronicon ex chronicis

• Ancestry.co.uk - the world's biggest family history website

• Great Britain
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