Charlemagne and Me

Many of these discussions about Charlemagne have been going on for some time. Here's one from 1999, and I'm quoting Nat Taylor:

I should add that a brief notice published in 1989, H. M. West Winter, "On intermarriage among the descendants of Charlemagne," NEHGS NEXUS 6 (1989), 107, and based on West Winter's _Descendants of Charlemagne: Brandenburg Updated_, indicates that he found 1,601 descents from Charlemagne to Edward III, 3,132 for Edward & Philippa combined. This suggests that you may have several lines of alleged connection to Charlemagne which more conservative sources dismiss as incorrect or unproven. But you're in the same order of magnitude... West Winter listed the following number of Carolingian descents for Anglo-Norman monarchs:

• William the Conqueror: 1
• William Rufus, Henry I: 19
• Stephen: 25
• Henry II: 28
• Richard I, John: 50
• Henry III: 101
• Edward I: 230
• Edward II: 445
• Edward III: 1,601
• Black Prince (& bros.): 3,132

So what does that mean for me? I have two descents from Edward III through two of his sons, so I start off with 6,264 descents from Charlemagne. However, I have countless ancillary lines to Edward I, Henry III and the others on this list. I'm guessing, conservatively, I have about 8,000-10,000 descents from Charlemagne. But they come through just seven people who came to New England.  And I'm half British, so I fit into one of the two nationalities where it is more than likely for such a descent.  [One of my peeves against my software Reunion is that it doesn't automatically count how many descents one has from a given ancestor.  So, I've never calculated the other number of descents I have from those earlier monarchs.]

What I do know is that my Irish and Slovak ancestors did not descend from Charlemagne.  How can I know? Well, true I can't possibly know for sure nor prove it (and neither can you disprove such a statement).  The point is my Irish ancestors descend from some Irish shepherd who was a contemporary of Charlemagne's the same 8,000-10,000 times.  The reason Edward III's sons have so many descents is that royal and noble people married each other.  Peasants married each other.  It is wrong to think that peasants and serfs married royal and noble people.  These classes didn't mix.  All of my gateway ancestors were not peasants.  They were all the upper class of the non-titled people in England. The very fact that I can find the paper trail even now, shows that they were people of repute.  The reason you can't find a royal line for everyone may not be that the documents no longer exist, but that they never existed in the first place. 

Comments

[L Mahler]

You say that:
"Peasants married each other. It is wrong to think that peasants and serfs married royal and noble people."

True, but persons of different social status did intermarry - I thought you knew that!

Compare the ancestry of Thomas Bradbury,
to that of his wife Mary Perkins.

Or what about Alice Freeman Thompson Parke?
Did her daughters marry into families of gentry status, similar to her own?

Do we need more examples?

[Martin]

One should never post when angry or after a martini. I tend to do both. Certainly the examples you cite are neither peasants or royalty. Marrying up or down one social stratum I understand (in these cases, lesser gentry with average farmers). I would also wonder if Thomas Bradbury would have married Mary Perkins had he stayed in England. By coming to New England, his choices of a wife from his own social level was severely limited.

However, my point was more to the Central, Southern, and Eastern European traditions as well as the middle ages rather than colonial times.