Day Thirty Two

Writing the post about Mary Hervey got me in the mind to explore more about the women in my family.  Although I have tended to concemtrate on my father's line, the patrilineage , I decided to explore the matrineage.  My mother's  grandmother was Emily Frances Windsor and I still carry that Windsor name. It was clearly felt to be important. So I kept exploring

Emily's brother , Richard Other Windsor, discovered in 1903 that he had inherited the title Earl of Plymouth.  So he trotted off to London but decided that as he was just a lawyer he really didn,t have the financial resources to take on the responsibilities of being an Earl. Apparently he did a deal where it seems he got a bit of a "payout" and the title then went to the Windsor-Clive branch of the family. They are still the Earls of Plymouth.

I decided to go online and hunt out the Other Windsor ancestors.  The Other Windsor family line is easy to trace and goes straight back to 1004 AD in England. And that is when it gets really interesting. Until 1004 the family was known simply as Windsor, an ancient Anglo Saxon family who controlled the fortified hill where Windsor Castle now stands. They had probably been based there since the days of the Roman Empire; this was a crucial strategic position.  But as the new millenium approached the Windsor line was in danger of extinction.  There was no male heir.  There was however a formidable Windsor woman running the show.  A marriage was needed to continue the line.  And the solution would come from Italy

Other Gheradini, who was the nineteenth Duke of Tuscany, born in Florence in 967AD, married the Windsor matriarch in 1004.  He took up the name Windsor and their children became the Other Windsors.  The next generation of Other Windsors teamed up with William the Conqueror after the Norman Conquest in 1066.  William eventually assumed ownership of the fortified hill building a castle there, whilst the Other Windsors moved a few miles down the road to Stanwell, where members of the family still lived almost a thousand years later when Emily's brother, living in Toorak in Melbourne inherited the title Earl of Plymouth.  The Gheradini family, Dukes of Tuscany, from whence came the Other part of his name, claim descent from Helen of Troy.  Now that is a matrilineage.