The Rhymer
LostCousins Member
I have just been catching up with some LC newsletters, having been out of touch, and was interested by the paragraph in that of midjul25 about Gateway Ancestors. I'm not trying to find blue blood or links to royalty, but Debrett's says that I have a link to an Earl of Lincoln.
I have two separate Gaunt families in my tree, who meet up in my grandmother, a descendant of the Lincolnshire-who-moved-to-Lancashire-lot who married a descendant of the Staffordshire-who-moved-to-Lancashire-lot. The Staffordshire Gaunts, according to Debrett's, are descended from the Reverend John Gaunt who was Rector of Dudly in 1530, by gift of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and "by ancient and uniform tradition, was a descendant of the dispersed and deprived family of Gaunt, Earls of Lincoln, whose possessions were forfeited, temp. Henry III.
While I would love to take my family back further than about 1600, this all sounds very iffy to me, despite it being Debrett's. I have looked up the Earl of Lincoln under Henry III and found that they were from the de Lacy family. Henry ruled from 1216-1272; John de Lacy was a baron in 1212 (one of those who was behind Magna Carta) after which he was excommunicated (cause and effect?), went on crusade and was made Earl of Lincoln in 1232; it came via his wife who was the only heiress of her mother, a co-heiress of a previous Earl of Lincoln, by the name of de Blondeville. John de Lacy died in 1240, but his heir was still a minor, and as his, John's title came from his wife, suo jure, she actually kept it; their son died first, and the Countess died in 1266, leaving the title to her grandson, Henry de Lacy, who died in 1311.
So that covers Henry III's reign, with not a Gaunt in sight, and nobody from Ghent, either (like John of Gaunt) to muddy the waters.
But where did my Gaunts come from?
I have two separate Gaunt families in my tree, who meet up in my grandmother, a descendant of the Lincolnshire-who-moved-to-Lancashire-lot who married a descendant of the Staffordshire-who-moved-to-Lancashire-lot. The Staffordshire Gaunts, according to Debrett's, are descended from the Reverend John Gaunt who was Rector of Dudly in 1530, by gift of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and "by ancient and uniform tradition, was a descendant of the dispersed and deprived family of Gaunt, Earls of Lincoln, whose possessions were forfeited, temp. Henry III.
While I would love to take my family back further than about 1600, this all sounds very iffy to me, despite it being Debrett's. I have looked up the Earl of Lincoln under Henry III and found that they were from the de Lacy family. Henry ruled from 1216-1272; John de Lacy was a baron in 1212 (one of those who was behind Magna Carta) after which he was excommunicated (cause and effect?), went on crusade and was made Earl of Lincoln in 1232; it came via his wife who was the only heiress of her mother, a co-heiress of a previous Earl of Lincoln, by the name of de Blondeville. John de Lacy died in 1240, but his heir was still a minor, and as his, John's title came from his wife, suo jure, she actually kept it; their son died first, and the Countess died in 1266, leaving the title to her grandson, Henry de Lacy, who died in 1311.
So that covers Henry III's reign, with not a Gaunt in sight, and nobody from Ghent, either (like John of Gaunt) to muddy the waters.
But where did my Gaunts come from?
