Some of us in the WSP would love to believe that we descend from Wyamarus Whaley, that staunch standard bearer for the Normans at the Battle of Hastings, who was rewarded for his services by the lordship of Whalley in Lancashire, according to Rev. Samuel Whaley in his book on the Whaley family. I put Wyamarus in the same category as the Loch Ness Monster - something we would just absolutely love to believe in, but whose existence has not really been proven. Not to me, at least. So I set out to look up some of the references to the alleged first person of the Whal(l)ey name. (Let us be clear though, that if there really was a Wyamarus Whalley, then he got his name from the place, not the other way round.) Firstly Whitaker's book, 'An History of the Original Parish of Whalley', 4th edition, published 1872. A few weeks ago, I sent a message to the list about Whitaker's analysis of the Domesday Survey of England, completed in 1086, 20 years after the Norman Conquest. At that date, the lord of the manor of Whalley was, in fact, the Church. This had been the case for several hundred years before the Conquest, and continued to be so for nearly two hundred years afterwards. The temporal lords of the area were Roger de Busli and Albert Greslet, who held it from Roger de Poitou, or the King. There is no mention of Wyamarus, or his descendents, in the Survey of the whole of what became the southern (and largest) part of the county of Lancashire. So perhaps Wyamarus existed, but later on, and the story about his exploits at the Battle of Hastings were just made up to give a bit of colour? Certainly, as William Whalley points out on his Website, there are not enough descendants of Wyamarus (as recorded by Rev. Sam) to fill the years available. But if Wyamarus ever existed, he doesn't appear in Whitaker's book on the history of the parish of Whalley. I have searched it thoroughly, with the help of a fairly comprehensive index, and there is no-one with even a faintly similar name. So far I've drawn a blank. But the search will continue. Frank Whalley Cardiff, Wales, UK