The Duchess of Cambridge's descent from King Edward IV

[Michael Rhodes]

Christopher Challoner Child, an American genealogist, proved recently that the Duchess of Cambridge has royal antecedents. Through her mother Carole’s Harrison ancestors from Co Durham, she is descended from Elizabeth Lumley, an illegitimate child of Richard III’s brother King Edward IV.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10139561/Care-Quality-Commission-regulators-should-have-some-clinical-expertise.html

[Olivier]

Edward IV, King of England 1442-1483 & Elizabeth Lucy
	|
	Elizabeth Plantagenêt ca 1464
	|
	|						|
	Roger Lumley						Sibill Lumley
	|						|
							|
	|			|			|
	Agnès Lumley +1564			Isabel Lumley			Anne Hilton
	|			|			|
	Robert Lambton 1530-1583			Christopher Conyers +1608			John Hedworth +1600
	|			|			|
	Jane Lambton 1567-1648			|			Anne Hedworth
	|			|			|
	|
	|			|
	Nicholas Blakiston			John Conyers, Baronet Conyers of Horden +1664
	|			|
	William Blakiston			John Conyers 1622-1687
	|			|
	Ralph Blakiston +1704			John Conyers
	|			|
	Jane Blakiston +1774			Ralph Conyers +1767
	|			|
	|
	Thomas Conyers +1810
	|
	Jane Conyers +1813
	|
	Jane Hardy 1795
	|
	Anthony Liddle ca 1817
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	Jane Liddle ca 1839
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	John Harrison 1874-1918
	|
	Thomas Harrison 1904-1976
	|
	Dorothy Harrison 1935-2006
	|
	Carole Goldsmith 1955-
	|
	Catherine Middleton 1982-

[Michael Rhodes]

Olivier! You are a star.

[Harry Merritt]

Interesting. I was curious to know a little more about these people, so I did some Google searches. A search consisting of "Ralph Conyers" & "Jane Blakiston" turned up the fact that Ralph Conyers (c. 1697-1767) was Sir Ralph Conyers, 5th baronet, "a glazier" who inherited the title but nothing else from a cousin. His son, Sir Thomas Conyers (died 1810), was a pauper who died in a workhouse at Chester-le-Street, leaving three daughters who, according to contemporary accounts, married "working men." One was Jane (1758-1813), who married William Hardy. Gentleman's Magazine, December 1809 (GM available online) published a letter from a man named Surtees detailing the decline of the Conyers family fortunes. Sir Bernard Burke included same in a book called "Vicissitudes of Families," and Ruvigny, in PRBR, Mortimer-Percy Volume, has these same details. Ruvigny does not list issue of Jane Conyers Hardy & William Hardy. 

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[hoove...@yahoo.com]

I'd be happy to send a scanned copy of Chris Child's article, "Connecting Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, to Sir Thomas Conyers, 9th Bt. of Horden, Durham," which appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of American Ancestors.  The Vicissitudes of Families reference mentioned below is discussed and quoted in the article.

I sent a copy to Mr. Guionneau who replied that the scan was unreadable and I sent a copy to Mr. Rhodes who didn't indicate he had a problem reading it so I guess the chances of a clear can are 50-50.

Cordially,

Marc  

[Michael Rhodes]

Marc, the doc won't open. I was thinking it was my laptop, but then ....

[Harry Merritt]

I was slow to remember that the magazine Christopher Challender Child writes for is published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, of which I am a member. With some difficulty, I have located and "cut and pasted" into the space below the contents of the article, sans various footnotes. A Google search of "Christopher C. Child" & "Sir Thomas Conyers" will also locate the article.

Fall 2011 American Ancestors  -- By Christopher Challender Child

Connecting Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, to Sir Thomas Conyers, 9th Bt. of Horden, Durham

As requested in the Book’s introduction, almost immediately after the publication of William Addams Reitwiesner’s The Ancestry of Catherine Middleton in April [2011], new information surfaced on the forebears of HRH The Duchess of Cambridge. An additional baptismal, marriage or burial date, and an occasional set of new parents, have all been welcome additions to her ancestor table.
Most surprising, however, was new information from Andrew Pattison of Blackhall Colliery, County Durham, England, whose nephew by marriage is a cousin of the Duchess through the Harrison family. Mr. Pattison discovered new ancestry for #114, Anthony Liddle, a pitman and coal miner in County Durham. We knew Anthony was born around 1817, and his 1838 marriage record to Martha Stephenson identified his father as James Liddell, also a pitman.[1] Mr. Pattison found the baptism (11 August 1816) of Anthony Liddle at Chester le Street, son of James and Jane Liddle, and the christenings of Anthony’s seven siblings.[2]
Also in this parish register was the marriage (6 May 1815) of James Liddle, from Newburn, Northumberland, and Jane Hardy, aged twenty, from Chester le Street, witnessed by William Hardy.[3] I found Jane’s baptism (3 May 1795) at Penshaw, Durham, daughter of William and Jane Hardy.[4] William Hardy had married Jane Conyers at the Church of St. Margaret Crossgate, Durham, on 19 September 1778.[5] Jane Conyers was baptized 24 January 1756 at Chester le Street, daughter of Sir Thomas Conyers, 9th Baronet (1731–1810), and his wife Isabel Lambton (1729/30–1779).[6]
Sir Thomas was the subject of a fascinating story.

Sir Thomas was the last of a line of Conyers baronets, whose hereditary knighthood (the definition of a baronetage) was created by Charles I in 1628.
According to Sir Bernard Burke, the family lived in considerable style during the seventeenth century. The fifth baronet, Sir Ralph Conyers of Chester le Street (1697–1767), inherited the baronetcy in 1731 from his second cousin, but did not inherit his cousin’s land. Ralph’s son, Sir Blakiston Conyers, 6th Bt. (d. 1791), left his estate to his nephew, Sir George Conyers, 8th Bt. (d. ca. 1800); “in three short years this infuriated youth [Sir George] squandered the whole fortune he had derived from his uncle, in scenes of the lowest dissipation.” After George’s death, the baronetcy was inherited by his uncle, the 9th and last baronet. Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham, wrote to The Gentlemen’s Magazine to appeal to local gentry and other worthies to assist the aging baronet, “in his 72nd year, solitary and friendless, a pauper in the parish work-house of Chester-le-Street.”

Shortly after Sir Thomas’s reduced situation was discovered, the baronet was moved to a place of ease and comfort — but he died within two months of Surtees’ solicitation. Surtees added that “In him (the last male heir of a long line of ancestry, whose origin may be traced to a period of high and romantic antiquity) the name and title expires, and the blood of Conyers must hereafter flow undistinguished in the channels of humble and laborious life. Sir Thomas has left three daughters, married in very inferior situations, and it is trusted his benefactors will not think the residue of their contributions ill applied in placing some of his numerous grandchildren in the decent occcupations of humble life.”

Surtees’ concluding paragraph is worth repeating: “A time may yet come, perchance, when a descendant of one of these simple artizans may arise, not unworthy of the Conyers’ ancient renown; and it will be a gratifying discovery to some future genealogist, when he succeeds in tracing in the quarterings of such a descendant the unsullied bearing of Conyers of Durham.”[8]

In the format of “Notable Kin” columns by Gary Boyd Roberts, the descent of the Duchess of Cambridge from Sir Thomas Conyers, 9th Bt., is outlined below (with birth and death years). Following that outline are two (and probably four) descents to Sir Thomas and his wife from Edward IV, King of England (d. 1483).

Mr. Pattison’s discoveries and further research by G. B. Roberts and myself have added sixty new sixteenth and seventeenth century ancestors (previously only two of the Duchess’s sixteenth century forebears were known). The nearest kinsman among immigrants to the American colonies is [US President] William Howard Taft forebear Mrs. Elizabeth Mansfield Wilson of Massachusetts, for whom see Register 155 [2001]: 3–35, and later compendia by Roberts and Douglas Richardson.

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, née Catherine Elizabeth Middleton (b. 1982), wife of HRH Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cambridge (b. 1982); Michael Francis Middleton (b. 1949) & Carole Elizabeth Goldsmith (b. 1955); Ronald John James Goldsmith (1931–2003) & Dorothy Harrison (1935–2006); Thomas Harrison (1904–1976) & Elizabeth Mary Temple (1903–1991); John Harrison (1874–1956) & Jane Hill (1875–1957); John Harrison (ca. 1834–1889) & Jane Liddell (ca. 1839–1881); Anthony Liddell/Liddle (1816–1857) & Martha Stephenson (ca. 1818–1896); James Liddell/Liddle (b. 1790) & Jane Hardy (b. 1795); William Hardy (1748–1833) & Jane Conyers (1756–1835); Sir Thomas Conyers, 9th Bt. (1731–1810) & Isabel Lambton (1729/30–1779); Sir Ralph Conyers, 5th Bt. & Jane Blakiston, James Lambton & Dorothy Austin; John Conyers & Margaret Bayley, Ralph Blakiston & Mary Sampson, James Lambton & _____; (prob.) John Conyers & ______,William Blakiston & Dorothy Lawson, Ralph Lambton & Susan Groves; Sir John Conyers, 1st Bt., & Frances Groves (sister of Susan), Nicholas Blakiston & Jane Porter, William Lambton & Anne _____; Christopher Conyers of Horden & Anne Hedworth, Sir William Blakiston & Jane Lambton, Robert Lambton & Frances Eure (parents of William and Jane); Richard Conyers of Horden & Isabel Lumley, John Hedworth & Jane Belasyse, John Lambton & Agnes Lumley; Roger Lumley & _____ (parents of Isabel and Agnes), Sir Ralph Hedworth & Anne Hilton; Thomas Lumley & Elizabeth Plantagenet (parents of Roger and Sybil), Sir William Hilton & Sybil Lumley; Edward IV, King of England (d. 1483), & his mistress Elizabeth (Wayte) Lucy.

Sir William Blakiston and Jane Lambton were also ancestors of both HM Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Diana, Princess of Wales. The above Frances (Eure) Lambton was the daughter of Sir Ralph Eure and Margery Bowes, great-grandparents of Mrs. Elizabeth Mansfield Wilson.

[Turenne]

Marvellous posts, and very interesting. No doubt the Lambton/Lumleys had Durham/Scarborough connections..

RL 

[Richard R]

Yes, v interesting thanks