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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2004-03 > 1080206565


From: Peter Stewart <>
Subject: Re: Generation counting
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 09:22:45 GMT
References: <james_bugger-1903042058450001@ts20-7.homenet.ohio-state.edu> <nathanieltaylor-AE9C3A.21371119032004@news06.east.earthlink.net> <lsO6c.112074$Wa.109163@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <7b33cc41.0403240020.eaff17f@posting.google.com> <qJb8c.122353$Wa.67978@news-server.bigpond.net.au> <7b33cc41.0403250058.31224e7e@posting.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <7b33cc41.0403250058.31224e7e@posting.google.com>


Nicholas Whyte wrote:
> Peter Stewart <> wrote in message news:<qJb8c.122353$>...
>
>>Nicholas Whyte wrote:
>>
>>>Peter Stewart <> wrote in message news:<lsO6c.112074$>...
>>>
>>>
>>>>That particular rule has ten thumbs, and Richardson is still learning to
>>>>count them - according to him, on the balance of what he considers
>>>>probabilities, Joan Beaufort's great-grandson was born when she was ca 82.
>>>
>>>
>>>What's the particular problem with that? My great-grandmother was only
>>>80 when I was born. She, my grandmother and my mother all married in
>>>their mid-20s; and my grandmother, my mother and I were all eldest
>>>children.
>>
>>You'll have to read the threads on Katherine Deighton for the background
>>to this - Rosie Bevan and Brad Verity posted about the chronology
>>necessary in that instance for Richardson's conclusion from his alleged
>>"research" to be plausible: it involves Joan Beaufort being conceived
>>when her father was ca 16 and then having her first son when she was ca
>>31, whose grandson was born when she was ca 82. Not impossible in a
>>documented case, but scarcely a sound basis for conjecture when proof is
>>absent and stronger circumstantial evidence is against it.
>
>
> I don't think an 82-year-old great-grandmother is remarkable at all,
> certainly not so remarkable as to automatically discredit the proposed
> relationship which is what you implied. Apart from my own case, I find
> on a quick check that Prince William had two living great-grandmothers
> when he was born, the Queen Mother then being 82 and Lady Fermoy a
> mere 74.
>
> Looking at someone closer to the time under discussion, Henry VIII, I
> find that he was born 50 years after his maternal grandfather, Edward
> IV, and that his one living great-grandmother at birth, Edward IV's
> mother, was 76 at the time. (Two of his other three great-grandmothers
> were born less than eighty years earlier.)
>
> However I agree that a 51-year-old *paternal* grandfather is much
> rarer, and a 16-year-old father, even of an illegitimate child,
> sufficiently unusual that strong documentary evidence is needed.

But that's the entire point I was making, so I'm not sure what your
response is trying to add. I have NOT implied that great-grandmotherhood
for 82-year-old women is remarkable much less to be automatically
discredited. As it happens, one of my own great-grandmothers (of two
living at the time) was exactly 82 when I was born. But there was no
peculiar imbalance in the generations before & after her, as in the
purported case of Joan Beaufort which compromised the simplistic "rule
of thumb" within the span of generations that I was reflecting on.

Peter Stewart

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