Plantagenet Ancestry (and back to William the Conqueror & Charlemagne)

Note: Below is the Abergavenny record from Burke’s Peerage which shows the Plantagenet line which ends in the Fiske-Harrison family.

Prince George Plantagenet, younger brother and heir to King Edward IV (although he was beheaded before succeeding and his brother Duke of Gloucester crowned King Richard III) married Lady Isabel Neville, daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, the most powerful nobleman in England known as ‘Warwick the Kingmaker’ for his actions in the Wars of the Roses.

Their daughter, Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, was the only woman in that period to be a peer in her own right, and was one of the richest nobles in England. Due to the dynastic threat she posed, and her loyalty to the Church of Rome, she was beheaded by the usurper Henry VIII of the House of Tudor, her cousin. Pope Leo XIII beatified her as a martyr for the Catholic Church on 29 December 1886.

Maragaret was the last of the Plantagenet line. (Her younger brother, Edward, 17th Earl of Warwick, was the last legitimate Royal heir in the line of Plantagenets to the throne of England. During the reign of the usurper Henry VII of the House of Tudor, he was tried by John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford – also a cousin – and executed, most likely due to pressure applied by Ferdinand and Isabella, King and Queen of Spain, whose daughter Catherine of Aragon was to marry Henry’s son.)

 

 

Sir Geoffrey Pole’s tenth child, Margaret – referenced but not listed above (she was the fifth of the six daughters) – married the Hon. Walter Windsor, son of the 2nd Baron Windsor, and their eldest daughter, Winifred, married John Gosnold of Otley Hall in Suffolk. (This is shown in the genealogical text below, which is available at this website, which traces the Plantagenets – and thus Fiske-Harrisons – back to William the Conqueror, who was himself a direct descendant of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.)

 

The following is a Memorial to John Gosnold, inscribed on a Memorial Tablet at St. Mary’s Church, Otley, Suffolk, England:

 

……….MEMORIAL…………….

Here resteth interred the body of John Gosnold 3rd Sonne of Robert Gosnold of Otley, Esq. & Ursula his wife borne of the right ancient & wor; families of Naunton & Wingfield of Letheringham.

His tender years in good studies at Oxford and in London his riper years hee spent in Court where he served in the places of gentle man Vsher in the ordinary of Maties of Q Elizabeth and K James 26 years and was after A Gentleman of y privy chamber in the ordinarie to King Charles. He married Winifred y daughter of Walter Windsor Esq. sonn of William Lo: Windsor and of Margaret his wife daughter of SR Geoffrey Poole Knight and the Lady Margaret Countess of Salisbury his wife daughter of the right noble Prince George Duke of Clarence brother to K: Edward the fourth of England & C

He departed the life 17th February Anno Dni: 1628 aged 60 years, who had issue by his said wife 5 sonnes & 3 daughters to who’s memory his said wife caused this inscription to be erected.

Robert Gosnold, 1534-1615, father of John Gosnold. married Ursula Naunton (1545-1615), daughter of Sir William Naunton (1506-bef. 1557) and Elizabeth Wingfied (c. 1520-1530 d. 1592). Ursula’s maternal grandparents were Sir Anthony Wingfield of Letheringham, Suffolk and Lady Elizabeth de Vere Wingfield, daughter of the John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford.

 

John’s eldest son Robert Gosnold was born in 1587, married Anne Talmache or Tollemache on Feb 20th 1609 at Helmingham, and died d.1633.

His eldest son Robert Gosnold was baptised May 12th 1611 and married Dorothy Jegon.

His eldest son Reverend Lionel Gosnold was born 1640, married Rebecca Hardy and died 1702.

His eldest daughter Elizabeth Gosnold married Reverend John Fiske (see main record.)

Otley Hall in Suffolk

 

Fiske-Harrison of Copford Hall, Essex

From Burke’s Armory

Fiske-Harrison (Copford Hall, co. Essex). Quaterly, 1st and 4th, az, two barz erm. betw. six estoiles, three, two, and one ar.; 2nd and 3rd, ar. three crescents barry undée az. and gu. Crest (italic) – Out of a ducal coronet or, a talbot’s head of the last guttée de poix.

From Burke’s Landed Gentry (1847)

From Burke’s Visitation of Seats and Arms of Noblemen and Gentlemen

Copford Hall

From A History of the County of Essex

The manor of COPFORD HALL was part of the possessions of Aethelric (d. c. 995) which he devised to Aelfstan, bishop of London, and his successors. (fn. 84) Before 1086 the king gave 17 a. of it to Robert Gernon, who held lands in Birch. (fn. 85) The rest of the manor remained in the see of London until it came to the Crown, presumably on the deprivation of bishop Bonner in 1559. (fn. 86) James I sold it in 1610 to John Argent and John Phillips, both of London. (fn. 87) Argent, who in 1593 had married the widow of the tenant, Reynold Mountjoy (d. 1589), had sold the manor by 1612 to Reynold’s elder brother, Edmund Mountjoy of Wethersfield (d. 1623). Edmund was childless and exercised the lordship jointly with his nephew, William Mountjoy, son of Edmund’s other brother Alan. William had presumably died by 1614 for there after Alan Mountjoy (d. 1625) was described as the lord. (fn. 88)

John Haynes had bought the manor by 1626, but was in America from 1633 until 1651, where he became governor of Massachusetts and then of Connecticut. Emanuel Haynes acted as lord in his absence. In 1654 John was succeeded by his son Robert Haynes (d. 1657) and then by Robert’s brother, Hezekiah, who had been one of Oliver Cromwell’s majorgenerals and who was imprisoned in the Tower of London from 1660 to 1662 for alleged treason. Hezekiah died in 1693. (fn. 89) His son John, on whom he had settled Copford, predeceased him in 1692 and the manor passed to his grandson John, who died childless in 1713, and then to John’s younger brother, Hezekiah. That Hezekiah Haynes, who died childless in 1763, devised it to his cousin John Harrison, who conveyed it in 1783 to his son John Haynes Harrison (d. 1839). (fn. 90)

J. H. Harrison’s son, Fiske Goodeve Fiske-Harrison (d. 1872), succeeded, then Fiske’s nephew Thomas H. Harrison (d. 1895), Thomas’s brother William T. Harrison (d. 1920) who was bishop of Glasgow and Galloway 1888-1903, William’s son Cyril Colvin Fiske Harrison (d. 1937), and C. C. F.’s widow, Mrs. A. G. D. Harrison. She held the lordship until 1946, when A. Brian C. Harrison, a descendant of Hezekiah Haynes (d. 1693), succeeded; he was Conservative M.P. for Maldon 1955-74 and was still lord in 1998, although much of the land had been sold in 1979. (fn. 91)