A Tangled Web

In the previous section it was demonstrated how Katherine Talbot, wife of Nicholas de Eyton, was, according to two accounts, the daughter of John Talbot the first Earl of Shrewsbury.� From this we find that she was a descendant of Edward I, King of England.� Upon further examination we see that her daughter-in-law, Anna Savage, wife of Lewis Eaton, was also a descendant of Edward I. These two women lived in the fifteenth century. Katherine Talbot was born 1418 and Anna Savage was born 1455.

Sir John Savage, father of Anna, was married to Catherine Stanley and it is from both Sir John and his wife that we can also trace back to the family of the Angevin rulers of England. In fact there are two lines that can be followed one from Sir John and one from Catherine Stanley. The line from Sir John takes us to Henry II and one of his mistresses who was named Ida. The line from Catherine Stanley goes by way of her mother, Joan Goushall, and her mother's mother, Elizabeth FitzAlan. Elizabeth's parents were one Richard FitzAlan, who was 10th Earl of Arundel and his wife Elizabeth de Bohun who was a granddaughter of Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, the daughter of Edward I.

It is from this point that we entered a new and different arena of research.� It is at this point that history and genealogy collide and to some degree form a tangled web. Regardless of whether or not I can actually trace my ancestry back to Charlemagne from Della Pickering, the grandmother of my grandfather, Leopold DeBacker, I was sufficiently fascinated with the complex relationship between Katherine Talbot and her daughter-in-law, enough to warrant an attempt at untangling the web of interconnecting lines and pedigrees.

In the first chapter was discussed generations, cousins, and degrees of consaguity - pointing out the obivious fact that each individual has two biological parents and each of those parents have two parents and so on and so forth, so that for each generation the number of ancestors doubles. It follows that each individual has two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great great grandparents, etc. If one goes back ten generations one would expect to find that there are a total of 512 unique ancestors. However that is not always the case, in fact it may, more than likely, be an exception. The reason for this being the simple fact that thoughout history cousins married cousins. In the past it was believed that it was better to marry a cousin than it was to marry a stranger.

Because the family lines of Katherine Talbot and Anna Savage can be traced back to Plantagenet Kings of England, it follows that their ancestry can also traced back to Charlemagne the king of the Franks and Holy Roman emperor. Yet when we trace back the line for example from Anna Savage we will find that Charlemagne is not only an ancestor of Anna's in the 25th generation from Anna, but that he is also a grandparent of hers in the 24th, 23rd, 22nd, and 21st generations. Also we find that for Katherine Talbot that she is removed from Charlemagne by the 20th through the 24th generation. Both of the women are descended from Charlemagne through five or more different lines that stem from two of Charlemagnes son's, Pepin who was King of Italy and Louis who was called the Pious.

The closest relationship between the two women is, of course, that Katherine was the mother-in-law of Anna Savage, but they are also related as cousins by varying degrees through a whole host of common ancestors. There are in fact so many different branches that intertwine and mingle that it is almost impossible to conceive the relationships that came about over the course of the nearly 650 years that separate the women from their common ancestor of Charlemagne. In fact to say that the emperor of the Frankish empire was a common ancestor is a bit of an understatement. From Charlemagne to Anna there are at least five branches by which her pedigree can be traced back to Charlemagne. From Charlemagne to Katherine, there also at least five branches through which Katherine can trace her lineage to Charlemagne. When we look at all of the ways in which these two women are related we find the following:

They are, at the closest, fourth cousins once removed through their common ancestors Humphrey de Bohun and the Elizabeth of Rhuddlan. Katherine is a descendant of Eleanor de Bohun and Anna is a descendant of Eleanor's brother, William de Bohun. In other words Katherine's great great grandmother was the sister of Anna's great great great grandfather.

At another level they are sixth cousins once removed. Both Katherine and Anna are descendants of Edward I, father of Elizabeth of Rhuddlan, but Anna is also a descendant of Edwards brother, Edmund Crouchback, first Earl of Lancaster by way of her grandmother, Joan Goushill. That �is both women are descendants of Henry III of England who was father of Edward I and of Edmund, but Anna can count two lines from Henry III, whereas Katherine has only that one line back to William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda of Flanders.

The two women are eighth cousins once removed by being a descendant of Berengaria and the other a descendant of �Berengaria's sister Blanche of Castile - both� were granddaughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The common ancestors being Alfonso VIII, king of Castile and his wife Eleanor (Leanora of England).

They are ninth cousins once removed by way of descent from Louis VII, King of France. Katherine being a descendent of Louis' first wife Constance of Castile, and Anna being a descendant of Louis' second wife, Adele of Champagne.

They are also twelfth cousins twice removed and this line is from Baldwin V, Count of Flanders and Adela of France.

Then a there is line of descent from Luitgarde of Vermandois and her sister, Adele (Gerloc) of Normandy in which they are at least fifteen cousins.

At the most distant of the relationships and they are descendants of Henry the Fowler of Germany and his wife St. Matilda of Ringleheim. Here the two women are twentieth cousins.

To give an example of how tangled the web is one need only look at the lineages of the two women from two contemporous 12th century rulers, Henry II of England and Louis VII of France.

Louis VII, who was king of France from 1137 to 1180, was married three times. His first wife was quite possibly the most famous woman of her time - she was Eleanor of Aquitaine. Eleanor, the daughter of the Duke of Aquitaine, and Louis were married in the same year that Louis became king. From this union they had two daughters, Alix and Marie, but neither of those daughters are ancestors of either Katherine or Anna.�

Katherine and Anna are both descended from Louis VII and from Eleanor of Aquitaine - but not from the marriage of Louis to Eleanor. Here is the explanation:

Louis and Eleanor were married in 1137. In 1147 Eleanor accompanied Louis to the holy land as he led the Second Crusade in an attempt to defend Palestine from the Turks. Here they had a falling out over Louis' conduct of the war. Eleanor felt that Louis was not doing enough to help her uncle, Count Raymond of Antioch. Their disagreements led to them having their fifteen year marriage annulled in 1152 under the pretext of kinship (consanguity). At the closest Eleanor and Louis were third cousins once removed - as both were descendents of Robert II, King of France, and his wife Constance of Arles.

Within six weeks after her divorce from Louis, Eleanor was married to Henry Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, who would eventually become Henry II, King of England. Henry, a great-grandson of William the Conqueror, and Eleanor were also cousins - third cousins once removed and of the same descent as Eleanor and her previous husband. Yet this did not seem to matter and although the couple remained married until Henry's death, the couple separated after she bore Henry five sons and three daughters. Their marriage was tumultuous and Henry fooled around quite a bit. For sixteen years of their marriage, Henry kept Eleanor under house arrest at various castles throughout England because she had conspired with her son's to revolt against their father.

Both Katherine and Anna are descended from the union of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine through not one, but two of the children - daughter, Eleanor (Leonora of England) and her marriage to Alfonso VIII of Castile and son, John, king of England and his marriage to Isabella of Angoulême.

Meanwhile back in France, Louis VII re-married after his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine was dissolved. In 1154 Louis VII married Constance of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VII of Castile and with her they had two daughters, Margaret and Alys. Louis and Constance were not related in anyway except through their marriage. Their daughter, Alys, who became Countess of Vexin, married William IV, Count of Ponthieu. Alys and William had a daughter who was known as Maria Talvas. This daughter, Maria, was an ancestor of Anna Savage.

Constance died in childbirth in 1160 and within five weeks after her death, Louis, who was eager to have a son and legitimate male heir, married for a third time. Louis' third wife was Adela of Champagne. Louis and Adela were sixth couins once removed by way of descent from Robert I, the 9th century king of West Francia.

The marriage of Louis and Adela produced a male heir to the throne of France. Their son Phillipe became Phillipe Augustus, King of France. Phillipe married Isabelle of Hainaut (they were 4th cousins once removed). Katherine Talbot could count Philip and Isabelle as ancestors.

So from this, one can see that the lineages for both Katherine and Anna are intertwined at various places throughout history. It is truly a tangeled web.

A quick survey of one or both of the women show that they are related to six Kings of France, four Kings of England, some of the Kings of Spain, and Kings of Germany. Anna Savage can trace her lineage back to three emperors of the Byzantine empire. The lineage of both women can be traced back to one of the Latin kings of Jerulsalem - Fulk (Foulques) V, Comte d'Anjou.

What follows is only a partial listing of the descent from Charlemagne to the century in which Katherine Talbot and Anna Savage lived. It is meant to be partial because it serves only to show those individuals to whom the two women were related. In most cases the mention of other spouses, other children, and siblings for whom there is no connection to either of the two women has been omitted.� Much of the information comes from encyclopedia articles, but some of the more obscure portions come from Medieval Lands - A Prosopography of Medieval European Noble and Royal Families by Charles Cawley (http://www.fmg.ac/Projects/MedLands/ ).

Each numbered individual below is a descendent of Charlemagne and is an ancestor of either Anna Savage, Katherine Talbot, or both. Each individual is listed twice - once as a child and then again later on in the list as a parent/spouse. It is easy to get lost in the list, but one only has to to following the numbering to keep track of where there are.�

Try not to get confused while reading the�PDF file listed�below as you may see the same individual described more than twice. In many cases an individual listed below appears more than twice because that individual was not only a descendant of Charlemagne, but was also married to another descendant of Charlemagne - in other words they and their spouse(s) were cousins by some degree.

Where History Meets Myth

One might think that story ends here. That I cannot go any further after I have demonstrated how it is possible for me to trace my lineage back to Charlemagne and the early rulers of Europe. What then is the genealogy of Charlemagne? or for that matter, what was the genealogy of Alfred the Great, King of the Anglo-Saxons?

Both Katherine and Anna can count Alfred the Great as an ancestor. His daughter, Aelfthryth (Elfrida), was married to Baldwin II, Count of Flanders, a great, great grandson of Charlemagne. ����

In the Middle Ages, major royal dynasties of Europe sponsored compilations claiming their descent from illustrious heroes or even gods of antiquity, in particular the rulers of Troy. Such claims were intended as propaganda glorifying a royal patron by trumpeting the antiquity and nobility of his ancestry. These descents lines included not only mythical figures but also stretches of outright fiction. For example the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers traced the ancestry of several English kings back to the god Woden, the English version of the Norse god Odin or some to Brutus, a mythical character from the time following the Trojan War.

Historically we can trace the line of Charlemagne back to his great, great, great, great grandfathers, Arnulf, Bishop of Metz and Pepin of Landen, Mayor of Austrasia. Yet contemporary chroniclers of Charlemagne were able to trace the lineage of Charlemagne back to Constantine and beyond to the hero's of the Trojan war. The following example comes from the notes of a 19th century book on medieval romances which cites a 15th century Italian love poem (Orlando Innamorato) as the source:

After the Grecians had taken Troy, and put most of their prisoners to the sword, among whom was Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, who was sacrificed at the tomb of Achilles ; in order entirely to extirpate the race of Hector, they sought for Astyanax ; but Andromache, to preserve his life, concealed him in a sepulchre, and took another child in her arms, with whom being found, they were both put to death. In the mean time the real Astyanax was safely conveyed, by a friend of his father, to the island of Sicily, when, being grown to man's estate, he conquered Corinth and Argos; he established a government at Messina, and married the queen of Syracuse, but was afterward killed by treachery, and his widow being driven from the city by the Greeks, took shelter in Risa, where she was delivered of a son named Polydore, from whom descended Clovis and Constantius. Constantius was the head of the line of Pepin, father of Charlemagne.

Writing in the days of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Geoffrey of Monmouth composed the Historia Regum Britanniae which begins with the story of a Trojan émigré named Brute who frees his enslaved countrymen from the Greeks and then following a dream in which Brute is visited by the goddess Diana, he leads the Trojans to a promised land, an island named Albion. The island is Britain and Brute becomes the first king of the British people.

From the time of Alfred the Great a number of genealogies trace his ancestry back some 38 generations to a legendary king named Sceaf. At some point, the lineage of Alfred the Great as given by the Anglo-Saxon Chroniclers leaves the arena of history and enters the realm of mythology.

In English heroic legend, Sceaf or Scef (Old English for sheaf) appears as an ancient legendary king who appeared mysteriously as a child, coming out of the sea in an empty boat. The name also appears as Sceafa and in corrupt form as Seskef and Strephius. A poem about this personage written by J. R. R. Tolkien partly modernizes the name as Sheave. In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (AD 855), Scef is listed as a son of the biblical Noah who was born on the ark. In William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum anglorum, his name is given as Strephius and son of Noah, born in the ark. Asser in his Life of Alfred repeats the listing of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle except that he replaces Sceaf altogether with the name Seth and mentions nothing about him being born in the ark. Some modern translations emend Seth to Shem who was son of Noah in the Genesis account.

Therefore if one were to use the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and the Bible as documentary evidence it could be shown that I am a descendent of Noah and ultimately of the first man, Adam and his wife, Eve. But then again I could be barking up the wrong tree...

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