This is my very first blog post! Yay me! Now let’s get into this.
I’ve been an avid reader for most of my life, and a while back I discovered Audible. Now, I’m not being sponsored by them (though we can always hope, am I right?), but I will admit that I am addicted. My current listening time is 8 months, 18 days, 2 hours and 38 minutes. I guess I’m saying my nerd credit score is decent.
So, I just finished Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda. Great book. Maybe I’ll do a book review on it. Anyway, I digress.
Next, I saw there was a The Great Courses audiobook by Robert J. Allison entitled “Before 1776: Life In America”. I love The Great Courses, and this sounded right up my alley.
Let me say that I highly recommend this audiobook (audio course?), but there are a couple things the brilliant Dr. Allison teaches in the course which I find to be factually inaccurate. One of these, I found almost inexcusable. I’ll explain.
In Lecture 8, entitled “New England Heretics: Religious and Economic”, Allison first addresses Rev. Roger Williams. I will give the Reverend Williams his own blog post in the near future, as he is closely tied to not only my wife’s ancestors, but my own. Suffice it to say, he was one of the most influential Puritan leaders there ever was.
Allison goes on to discuss the infamous Anne Hutchinson, who he describes as “the daughter of an English minister, the Reverend Wheelwright”. As with Rev. Williams, I will give Anne her own blog post(s), since she too was one of the most influential Puritan leaders of all time, and one of the few Puritan leaders who was also a woman. Today she is often regarded as a feminist icon.
The glaring mistake made by Allison was that Anne was NOT the daughter of Reverend Wheelwright!
Anne was, in fact, the daughter of the Rev. Francis Marbury and his wife Bridget Dryden, two more figures who deserve their own blog post (I can see this will be turning into a series). For now, we’ll say Rev. Marbury was a well-known playwright and a contemporary of William Shakespeare. He was a graduate of Cambridge, from whence the Puritan movement erupted, and though formerly an Anglican Deacon, he was so dangerous to the Church of England, they locked him away in the notorious Marshalsea prison. There is more to this story, but that will have to wait for thee (sic) Reverend Francis Marbury blog.
The Rev. John Wheelwright probably deserves his own blog post as well, but the point is, rather than the father of Anne, he was her brother-in-law, married to her husband’s sister, Mary Hutchinson. Why would this be upsetting to me, you might ask? Seems like a simple enough mistake even if it is being taught by The Great Courses, and will likely be taken as fact by thousands of listeners for posterity. Well, let me tell you.
Anne Marbury Hutchinson was the sister of my wife’s ancestor, Catherine Marbury. Bear with me, I am ever so slowly getting to the point.
In all the years I have been doing genealogy, and of all the great stories I have gleaned, one of the greatest comes from the Marbury line. For those in Newport, Rhode Island (love Newport… shout out to the Brick Alley Pub) and the greater New England area who are members of the Marbury clan, get ready for this!
As I understand it, in 1912, some of the writings of Massachusetts born historian/genealogist, lumber/railroad magnate, and 14th Governor of the State of Michigan, Henry Howland Crapo, were published in the book Certain Comeoverers. Funny name, yes, but an entire chapter of the book is dedicated to Catherine Marbury.
The chapter is full of great genealogical information, but what stunned me was his exposition on Sir Walter Blount. Sir Walter’s granddaughter, Anne Blount married William Marbury during the reign of Edward IV, or perhaps Henry the VI, as there was a bit of back and forth there in the mid to late 15th century England. The Rev. Francis Marbury and his daughters Catherine and Anne were of course their direct descendants, but that is the boring part.
Do you remember when I said Francis Marbury was a contemporary of Shakespeare? That’s right! Sir Walter Blount was the very Blount/Blunt who plays so prominently in the epic Henry IV by William Shakespeare! In fact, in Act 1, Scene 1 King Henry heralds the arrival of his friend Sir Walter Blount. Further, Act 5, Scene 3 gives the account of Sir Walter’s death.
Shakespeare does this with more panache, so read that, but I’ll summarize. Sir Walter makes himself a sacrificial decoy and leads their pursuers away from his friend and liege King Henry at the Battle of Shrewsbury, 21 July 1403. Wearing the King’s coat, he is eventually killed in a sword fight to the death by Douglas, leader of the Scots.
Shakespeare did not have to exaggerate in his descriptions of Sir Walter, who fought many battles in England, France and elsewhere. Thirty years prior, Edward of Woodstock, the Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince, asked Sir Walter to go to war with him in Spain to retake the throne for Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile, a political ally of the Black Prince. Sir Walter was the servant and closest confidant of the Black Prince’s brother, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster and also the son-in-law of Pedro the Cruel (alternately called Pedro the Just, so I guess it’s a perspective thing).
In Spain, Sir Walter would meet his wife Dona Sancha de Ayala, the beautiful daughter of Diego Gomez, Mayor of Toledo. You may never have heard of Diego Gomez, but you have heard of his descendants who range from King Ferdinand II of Aragon (3rd GGS*), the first King of a united Spain, sponsor of Christopher Columbus, and father of Catherine of Aragorn (first wife of Henry VIII… you know the thing), to the head of the House of Habsburg (known for the Habsburg jaw) and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (5th GGS), to Presidents George Washington (11th GGS), William Henry Harrison (11th GGS), and Benjamin Harrison (13th GGS), to even General Robert E. Lee (12th GGS).
Oh yeah, and my wife and children are descendants through their Marbury ancestry. Now, you know why I was so upset by Dr. Allison’s mistake as to the lineage of Anne Hutchinson! Well, we all make mistakes. Maybe one day he’ll read this and make a correction. Who knows?
In conclusion, Sir Walter Blount was laid to rest in the Church of the Annunciation of Our Lady of Newark, in Leicester, England. Sancha would join him 15 years later. Other notables buried in the church are Constance, the wife of John of Gaunt and daughter of Pedro the Cruel/Just, and Mary de Bohun, first wife of Henry IV Bolingbroke and mother of Henry V.
There are some who believe Sir Henry Neville (my 13th GGF) was the author of Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays, but that’s for another post.
*FYI- I use GGS, GGD, GGF, and GGM as abbreviations for Great-grandson, Great-granddaughter, Great-grandfather, and Great-grandmother. Many of you seasoned genealogists will know this already, but for the layman. 🙂