Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I have more immediately pressing matters that I would like to share with you, but last week I promised a revelation about my ancestry that I suggested would interest you. My most famous direct relative, my 13thgreat-grandmother, lived from about 1499 to 1543. She knew two kings intimately, shall we say, and has been portrayed in film by an actress who in recent years has been nominated for two acting Oscars. Any guesses who this might be?
Anyone who claims to have a famous relative should be told to prove it, so please forgive me as I trace the lineage, backwards, from me to my famous great-grandmother. Let’s begin the begats!
My father was David Marlin Jones, born to Marlin Matthew Jones, who was one of eleven children born to Albert Newton Jones. Marlin was the only one born in Oklahoma when it was still “Indian Territory.” Albert’s mother’s maiden name was also Jones, so I’m sure that helped save money on stationery when she got married in 1860, the year Albert was born. Emily’s father was Thomas Bradford Jones, who was son of William Jones, born the same year as our country (if the United States is your country). Speaking of our country, William’s father Captain Samuel Jones, Jr. served with George Washington (and got in trouble for allegedly gambling and stealing a pair of gloves, but was granted clemency by the good General).
Captain Jones was married to Leah Jones, née Thomas, daughter of John Thomas, who himself was the son of Reverend William Elias Thomas, who (in the winter of 1712) brought this line of my family from Wales (he was born in Llanwenarth, Monmouthshire, in southeast Wales, near the River Usk) to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he bought six farms, one for each of his surviving American children, for a total of 1248 acres (or two square miles) of what was then “wilderness land.”
Also born in Wales, the Reverend Thomas’s wife, Ann (Griffith) Thomas, was the daughter of Captain Samuel Griffith I, who came to the colonies in 1651, being awarded a tract of land in Calvert County, west side of the Patuxent River. I’m wondering who might have been living there when the land was given to the Captain. Griffith’s father was Sir Henry Griffith II, a baronet, meaning that he was the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. Sir Griffith’s wife, and the Captain’s mother, was Lady Margaret Ann Willoughby, daughter of Elizabeth Knollys.
OK, we are getting close now. Elizabeth’s father was Henry Knollys, a member of Parliament representing Oxfordshire (he attended Magdalen College at Oxford, which I guess would be like a Yolo County student earning a degree at UC Davis, and then representing this part of California in the California State Senate). Knollys also consorted with pirates, so he must have lived an exciting life. He died in Amsterdam of either illness or wounds, we are not sure which.
The mother of Henry Knollys was Lady Catherine Carey, a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, so much so that the Queen arranged for Lady Carey (who had the title of chief Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen) to be buried in Westminster Abbey when this Lady Carey, her first cousin, died in 1569. Here’s what the epitaph says, with the original spelling:
“The Right Honourable Lady Catherine Knollys, chief Lady of the Queen’s Majesty’s Bedchamber, and Wife to Sir Francis Knollys, Knight, Treasurer of Her Highnesses Houshold, departed this Life the Fifteenth of January, 1568, at Hampton-Court, and was honourably buried in the Floor of this Chapel. This Lady Knollys, and the Lord Hunsdon her Brother, were the Children of William Caree, Esq; and of the Lady Mary his Wife, one of the Daughters and Heirs to Thomas Bulleyne, Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde; which Lady Mary was Sister to Anne Queen of England, Wife to K. Henry the Eighth, Father and Mother to Elizabeth Queen of England.”
If you have been reading closely, then you have figured out that my 13th great-grandmother was Mary Boleyn, sister of Queen Anne Boleyn (who led to England’s break with the Pope and Catholicism), and, previously, consort (AKA mistress) to both King Francis I of France (who jump-started the Renaissance in France, “recruiting” Leonardo Da Vinci, who brought The Mona Lisa with him), and to Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII of England. (Mary was played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2008 film The Other Boleyn Girl, while my 13thgreat-grandfather, the courtier William Carey, was played by Benedict Cumberbatch). Today scholars think that my 12th great-grandmother Catherine Knollys was so beloved by Elizabeth because the Queen knew that Catherine was not just her first cousin, but also her step-sister.
Does that make me illegitimate British royalty? I’m not going to press that case with the British Crown at this time. But it does mean that Elizabeth Tudor, Queen Elizabeth I, is my first cousin, 13 times removed.
When word about my royal connections gets out, I expect to be invited to a much higher class of society balls and cocktail parties, especially after we are all vaccinated from COVID-19. And when will that be? 2021? 2022? We will have to see, and we will have to wait. I for one am lucky that I can look to my cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, as an inspiring object lesson in regal patience. As her suitors knew well, Elizabeth did not make hasty decisions. Living through the plague gives one perspective!
Who’s in your ancestry?
Devotedly,
Dr. Andy
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