After slicing into my finger with a brand new scalpel blade...copious amounts of blood dripped out all over the table and Himself flew into a panic trying to find the sticking plaster...I didn't much fancy making a start on a Fimo book cover...so went outside to find some flowers to zap in the microwave instead.
Did a couple of hours on Ancestry...because I'm researching about six different trees, there's always one to add to or to throw my hands in the air in despair when I reach a brick wall...Teresa's is one of the easiest actually...I whizzed back to the 1200's again with hers to the first man granted a Knight of the Garter and another who was killed in the battle of Evesham...apparently his body was 'mutilated' after his demise which sounds fairly grim.
Another of her people died abroad but was buried in England...his remains must have been dreadfully smelly by the time it reached its final resting place...maybe such people were embalmed...don't know the answer to that. Google might know I suppose.
On another tree I'm stuck with two women, who, it would seem, were never included in any records...no evidence of their births appear to exist...and another tree has me befuddled over a woman who fibbed about being married when she wasn't...no evidence of her birth either.
Of course researching someone else's tree does have pitfalls...all the skeletons that have remained hidden for the last couple of hundred years come out with their secrets and lies...then I have to say that your Granny wasn't your Granny and that Uncle you remember so clearly ended up in the Workhouse having drunk all the family money away...
There are total gob-smacking moments as well...when I look at the latest information on a person's tree and my jaw drops in surprise because their great grand uncle was someone of worldwide renown...I check and recheck and check again...then it dawns that the information is true enough.
There are castles and fortified manor houses and grand estates...people worthy of several paragraphs in Burkes Peerage...those who are counted among the alumni of the old universities...left with a Doctorate at the age of fourteen being literate in Greek and Latin who went on to join the Chambers of an exclusive Law firm. Picking up their gowns to avoid the hems becoming soiled by the gutters running with raw sewage and dead animals...drinking rough ale in dubious bars...choosing a prostitute with scars from Smallpox marking her face...
Some met their end in battles and sieges...others were privy to the inner circle of the Kings Court...perhaps they had elbowed their way into the Queens Bedchamber when she was in labour with her sixth child to ensure a bastard baby wasn't brought in to replace her own stillborn...
What does always fascinate me is that those people have among their descendants the humble Ag Labs...living in squalid cottages and beholden to the Squire. They have coal miners and harness makers...bakers and butchers...the unfortunates classed as 'idiots from birth' on census forms...
Children sent into fields to scare away the crows and women who made a sort of living from picking up the stones on arable land...not for them the fine robes or rich foods...they were lucky to learn how to write their own name, never mind be versed in Ancient Greek and fluent in Latin.
The draughty castles are long gone...now only ruins remain, home to Jackdaws and Rooks who squawk from tumbledown towers...those sites of old battles lie hidden under pasture land and the fortified houses, once adorned with rich tapestries hanging on the walls and platters of hammered pewter gracing long oak tables...bedrooms of great beds draped with fine linens and furs...they have barbed wire fences surrounding them and stern warnings about 'unsafe buildings' or Private Lands...No Trespassers.
Some of those people are buried in vaults in tiny English churches in small villages...others are on display for evermore...their marble effigies with folded hands...a small dog lying at their feet...roped off to stop inquisitive hands from touching...a small discreet plaque displaying their names and the dates...they live on in dedicated stained glass windows above altars in remote churches reached by long grassy lanes...
Whoever said history was boring.
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