Out of King Edward's Tree: Part 1

Today the UK is thinking about the Queen on what is her 95th birthday. It is a sad birthday, her husband having died two weeks ago. In two day’s time it is St. George’s Day. St. George is the patron saint of England, though his feast day has never been a public holiday. It was one of the Queen’s ancestors, King Edward III, who made St. George our patron saint. To celebrate the Queen’s birthday and St. George’s Day I have compiled a list of lgbt descendants of King Edward III. This also means that they are all descended from Edward’s father, the gay (though some gay historians refuse to accept this) King Edward II.

This year sees my 60th St. George’s Day and I want to celebrate, so I hope you’ll forgive my indulgence.

An ancient Greek philosopher once said “in the ancestry of every king is a slave, and in the ancestry of every slave is a king”. Mathematically, everyone must have a king, hereditary chieftain or tribal leader in their ancestry if you go back far enough.

I come from a family whose entire ancestry for the past 250 years has been working class. People only need what genealogists called a “gateway ancestor” to acquire royal blood. My gateway ancestor is Robert Appleyard whose parents were both descended from Edward III.

Today I bring the first part of my list of lgbt descendants of King Edward III. There are hundreds on my database, all of them distant cousins to each other, of course. I couldn’t justify excluding any of them from the lists. Because of this I have had to group the lists into three sections. Today is section 1, tomorrow I gives section 2, and on St. George’s Day I give section 3.

I wondered how best to chart all the descendants. There are two many names to produce anything like the lgbt Mayflower descendant charts I produced last year. In text alone the complete lines of descent cover 900 pages. Most of those listed have multiple descents from Edward III, so what I’ve done is select the shortest, senior line of descent for each lgbt descendant. I descend from Edward’s eldest son, Prince Lionel, but I also descend from two younger sons, Princes John and Thomas, through fewer generations.

The chart below shows how I’ve grouped the descendants together, primarily according to King Edward III’s grandchildren.

Here is the first section of lgbt descendants of King Edward III. They are listed according to the seniority of bloodline. After their person’s profession is the total number of lines of descent from Edward III.

List 1 – descendants of Princess Philippa, Countess of Ulster (1355-1381)

Rufus Wainwright (b.1974), singer and songwriter (1 line)

George Seymour (1924-1994), Nottinghamshire landowner (223 lines)

Anthony Blunt (1907-1983), Russian spy (4 lines)

Noel Currer-Briggs (1919-2004), codebreaker and genealogist (2 lines)

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989), composer (1 line)

Neil Patrick Harris (b.1973), actor (1 line)

List 2 – descendants of Princess Elizabeth (1363-1426) and King Henry IV (1367-1413)

Linda Hunt (b.1945), actor (4 lines)

Algernon Swinburne (1837-1909), poet (92 lines)

Teddy Tinling (1910-1990), tennis player and fashion designer (4 lines)

Roger Senhouse (1899-1970), publisher and translator (5 lines)

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), poet (6 lines)

Hallam Tennyson (1920-2005), television producer (6 lines)

Geoffrey Winthrop Young (1876-1958), mountaineer (6 lines)

Isabella Norcliffe (c.1785-1846), partner of Anne Lister (39 lines)

John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), poet and critic (2 lines)

Brooke Auchincloss (b.1963), photographer (5 lines)

Sir John Finch (1626-1682), British Ambassador to Turkey (2 lines)

W. H. Auden (1907-1973), writer (2 lines)

Gerald Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (1883-1950), composer (2 lines)

James Lees-Milne (1908-1997), author and historian (1 line)

List 3 – descendants of Princess Catherine, Queen of Castille (1373-1418)

Luisa Álvarez de Toledo, Duchess of Medina Sidonia (1936-2008) (6 lines)

Louisa Abbéma (1853-1927), artist (50 lines)

Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I de Medici (1610-1670) (13 lines)

Grand Duke of Tuscany, Gian Gastone de Medici (1671-1737) (13 lines)

Rupert Everett (b.1959), actor (95 lines)

Nicholas Eden, 2nd Earl of Avon (1930-1985), government minister (122 lines)

Hughes Cuénod (1902-2010), classical singer (227 lines)

Violet Trefusis (1894-1972), author and socialite (28 lines)

Cardinal Prince Henry Stewart, Duke of York (1725-1807) (18 lines)

Tomorrow I give section 2.