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From: "Peter Stewart" <>
Subject: Re: King's Kinsfolk: Richard II's kinsman, Edmund Staffiord
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 03:36:10 GMT
References: <1125165184.529728.320180@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1125427805.243922.161610@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <4314b5ea@news.ColoState.EDU> <1125434597.788287.176580@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <4314e4dd@news.ColoState.EDU> <1125464947.449840.163320@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com> <df3kj2$23l$1@eeyore.INS.cwru.edu> <1125502258.800335.300630@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>


Coments interspersed:

<> wrote in message
news:...

<snip>

> My observations are based on the evidence of hundreds of other examples
> of king's kinsfolk culled from thousands of pages of original source
> materials both English and French over several centuries.

How strange then that the novelty hasn't worn off yet, that you are still
breathlessly relating every last discovery of factoids that have been known
& readily available for decades if not centuries, and moreover that you are
just now getting round to _The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II_
published in 1933, that ought to have been a starting point for any
systematic research in this subject.

> Regarding this specific case, I might note that if the kinship ran
> short (5th degree on one side), it was usually on the king's side.
> That is why we can be virtually certain that Bishop Stafford was
> related to King Richard II through the Fiennes, Quincy, or Wake
> families. These three families are the only ones available at the 5th
> degree on the king's side, other than the English royal family itself.

But you have no way of establishing that this specific relationship occurred
at the fifth degree. Until you can at the very least come up with convincing
examples to show that KNOWN relationships beyond a particular degree were
consistently (better yet invariably) NOT acknowledged by kings, it can't
matter how many examples you produce where their UNKNOWN relationships were
mentioned, since we are left in the dark about the import of this. Mere
repetition is not probative, without direct evidence or comprehensive
analysis.

> Since I've never seen any of the Staffords, Bassets, Camvilles, or
> Vernons addressed as king's kinsfolk, I have to assume none of these
> families are related to the English royal family.

Why not, given the patchy reading you have clearly undertaken, just assume
that you don't know? Or tell us where you have seen members of these
families addressed by kings & princes WITHOUT mention of kinship.

> And, since none of Bishop Stafford's paternal relatives were called
> king's
> kinsfolk by King Richard II, I have to assume that Bishop Stafford was
> related to King Richard II through his mother's family, the Vernons.

But how many & which paternal relatives of the bishop were addressed by
Richard II WITHOUT reference to kinship?

> In short, this means that the possibilities are quite limited. You have
> Fiennes,
> Quincy, or Wake on the king's side and Vernon and possibly Camville on
> the Bishop's side. That's it.
>
> This is why we need to pay close attention to the marriage of Bishop
> Stafford's great-grandfather, Sir Richard de Vernon, to Eleanor de
> Fiennes. This marriage could simply be a coincidence, but I doubt it.

There are knots if intermarriage between many families at this time that
would give rise to such coincidences. What circumstantial evidence is there
for presupposing a doubt in this specific case?

If you won't answer the points I have raised, you may as well stop reading
my posts altogether and spare us the childish & smarmy refain about the
newsgroup being for "making friends". Surely even you are not insanely
narcissistic enough to miss the obvious: it is not for you to determine what
value or purpose the newsgroup has for me, or anyone but yourself.

Peter Stewart


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