On 17 Jun at 10:45, roy.stockdill@btinternet.com wrote: > From: Tim Powys-Lybbe <tim@powys.org> > > > But what sort of performance should I have put on today on hearing > > that an ancestress who was judicially murdered most foully had lived > > in the house I was visiting? I have now found a total of 42 > > ancestors who were executed or hung, a fair number of them not > > without good cause. > > > > So I wonder if this could be the follow-up, to find some luvvies who > > could put on a good show as they were taken round all the various > > places of execution of their ancestors. We could have other luvvies > > acting the part of the to-be-hung ancestor. And the executioner. > > Jobs for the boys galore. > > > > Then we could have a competition for the luvvie who put on the > > greatest show of shock, horror, grief and dismay? With telephone > > voting of course.> > > You are even more cynical than I am! It doesn't surprise me in the > slightest to hear that many of your ancestors were executed. I > suspect there are those on the Board of Trustees at the SoG who have > harboured similar thoughts about both of us at one time or another! Another excuse for some telephone voting? > I wonder who's had the most ancestors executed, you or Clare Balding? Could be either way. Through her Hastings ancestors there are at least 19 executions and her Stanley ancestors bring in another 13, 32 so far. Give it a few months of hard exploration and I'm sure quite a few more could be found. > I presume you don't descend from the Duke of Clarence who Shakespeare > had being drowned in a butt of Malmsey, as she does? In 1905 a chap called Ruvigny published a volume of all the known descendants of said Clarence. At that time he counted 17,525 who were living. Multiply by at least four for the additional descendants from 1905 to 2013 and there might be well over 50,000 alive today who descend from George of the butt of Malmsey. Add in those whom Ruvigney left out. Subtract a few for those whose descent had what is known as a hiatus. Sounds like anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000. Of whom I and my siblings are but a few, unknown hiatuses apart. Clarence himself had only 8 executed ancestors including himself and then four of his descendants were disposed of though his gt-grandson young Henry Poole, who was held in the Tower, might just have died of natural causes around 1542 when he could have been around 7 years old. But imagine the terror that had been in the life of one of his sisters who survived to a ripe old age until Feb 1602/3. She had seen her brother die, somehow, in the tower, her father executed, her grandmother executed, her great uncle executed and her gt-grandfather drowned in that butt (or so it is said). She must have been afraid to put a single foot out of line throughout her life. -- Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org for a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/