Ada de Huntingdon - Curators :Ada was also married to Ralph Brereton please add

And Erica, I am not choosing to disregard anything. I feel like you are not putting all the evidence forward. The evidence conflicts with itself, which means it needs more research. You want to put aside all other genealogists, heraldic information, a sworn document by the church, a tomb, her relationship to that church, everything else and say " only this matters" and I'm saying that until you explain the inconsistencies, you have no right to make a final judgment . First you claimed the tomb was a monument, but that ended up being wrong. And so on. You disregard the site of the woman's burial completely and that Gilbert Brereton was the church rector at the time, proving an extremely close connection with her burial again and the family again. While I am digging up original source material, church records, and evidence that" paperwork" especially at this time can be unreliable you keep trying to close the case without fully exploring the inconsistencies. Do you realize it would be a serious crime if the Breretons claimed descent from David of Scotland and used his arms? Someone long before you and I investigated this as it could have had potential important consequences. So, I'm waiting to hear how you explain all the inconsistencies. Or put forward another candidate who fits all the qualifications of being able to join the King of Scotland's arms with the Breretons and is the daughter of David. Why aren't you researching the arms which are so very important to this, or any other 13th century research? It's not up to me tp play defense here, you are the curator. Please answer all the questions. Then we can move forward.

Here is a review of Dough Richardson's book from another genealogist having problems with him:

Yes

No

Can you find her birthdate? Because I couldn't, and her mother was much younger than her father, and so could have still been having children their year her father died.

A review of Doug Richardson's book:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Devil is in the details! August 26, 2009

By A Skeptical Reader

Format:Hardcover|Verified Purchase

I bought this book because it was the first "Royal Ancestry" tome to list one of my own ancestors, namely Richard Parker, 17th century immigrant to Virginia. The author accepted the research of amateur genealogists Waunita Powell and Fred Olen Ray, and included Richard and George Parker, allegedly sons of James Parker and Catherine Buller of Cornwall, in the "Courtenay" line (pp 238-243). Reading this part of Richardson's book, one would naturally assume that this descent was "proven," at least as much as any pedigree can be without DNA verification. However, because these are my ancestors, I have looked in great detail at this Parker family, and I have found a great many problems that would make me hesitate to take the ancestry shown by Richardson at face value. To look at Richardson's bibliography for this line on p. 243, you couldn't tell that McSwain (1980) is a book (now long out of print), while Powell (1990) is just a typewritten collection of notes. There is also no mention of the fact that McSwain and Powell came to opposite conclusions, nor any mention of the fact that the identification of Richard Parker of Cornwall with Richard Parker of Virginia essentially rests on one document which appeared in the late 19th century, the original of which has apparently vanished. When I wrote to Mr Richardson and laid out in great detail the problems associated with the Parker identification, his reply was short, dismissive, and showed a complete lack of understanding of the issues involved. If there are all these ambiguities and uncertainties with this one line, which are not even touched upon by Richardson in his presentation, how many other lines in the book rest on equally shaky ground? How did he get such a reputation as a thorough genealogist? I don't think I'll ever buy any of his books again, because I do not feel I can trust the ability of the author to evaluate sources. Gary Boyd Roberts, in the most recent edition of The Royal Descents of 600 Immigrants to the American Colonies or the United States Who Were Themselves Notable or Left Descendants Notable in American History includes this Parker family in an addendum, and that has made me wonder now about him. Genealogy is big business, and everybody wants to be able to trace their family tree back to Charlemagne, never mind that it's often hard enough to find out who great-grandma really got pregnant by!

I'm only half paying attention to this discussion. I think the evidence as we know it is highly ambiguous. It's unlikely to result in a definitive answer unless there is something more. In addition, I'm generally persuaded by the opinion of experts. The place to start with any debate is with the expert opinion, then point out what, if anything was overlooked.

Doug Richardson is still alive and still actively researching. Wouldn't the better course be to take these arguments to him? Or, if that's what the references to an expert are all about, then why not be content with his answer for now?

I've found material (once in a great while) that changes the mind of one of the experts. I'm very proud of those cases. Once, I noticed a minor error on the extended family William Shakespeare in Sir Anthony Wagner's Pedigree and Progress. I did the polite thing -- I wrote to him and asked. He gave his blessing to my information. Of course, the error was something that was tangential to his point and only obvious to me because I had done so much research in that obscure little corner.

Found a heraldic expert at the Chesire Heraldry Foundation. Put in a request regarding evaluation of the Coat of Arms at St. Mary's, Astbury. There are references in William Brereton's coat of arms to Scotland as well.

Who is your heraldic expert? I'm a former VP of the American Heraldry Society, so it's probably someone I know.

The thing that caught my attention today are the references to heraldry, and particularly the idea that the Breretons would have had to have the permission of the English College of Arms to use Ada de Huntingdon's arms, as well as the idea that Scots prove their right to arms before the Court of the Lord Lyon.

There is some element of truth there, but the broad strokes end up distorting the idea. The English College of Arms was chartered in 1484 by Richard III -- long after the lifetime of this Ada. Coats of arms were the subject of litigation by the Court of Chivalry even before that time. Warbelton v. Gorges (1347) and Scrope v. Grosvenor (1389) are two of the most famous.

The office of Lord Lyon has existed at least from about 1400, but wasn't put on a statutory footing until 1592.

I think it would be a great mistake to think of later heraldic practice when making arguments about the heraldry of the 13th century.

Perhaps it is true that the Scottish royal coat of arms quartered with Brereton is found "all over" St. Mary's Astbury, but I would want much more info. I don't find any examples on a quick Google search. Do you have a link?

At what period? In what context? Victorian renovation or original? Are we sure it's Scotland and not some similar arms? Remember too that there are examples in this period where arms were quartered even though the later, more mature rules would not have allowed quartering. It's worth investigating in some depth rather than just making assumptions based on modern practice.

Pamela - "I'm" not doing anything but objecting to logical inconsistencies suggested for how "my" 25th great grand mother is depicted in the Geni world family tree.

The affirmative case is yours to make, not "mine" to defend, as I believe the Geni representation as current is "best known at this time."

Pamela, I see that we cross-posted above, and that you're one of Doug Richardson's haters. Fair enough. Although I'm one of his fans, he's been wrong before -- and has publicly corrected himself.

Are you familiar with soc.genealogy.medieval? Have you researched this question with the experts there? Many of them hate each other. It can be very tedious to read through all the personal attacks but well worth it if you find something on point.

So, here. Set aside Richardson for a minute. Before Richardson, who was the last expert to tackle this problem? Did they address your specific concerns? Did Richardson have any objections? What conclusion?

After reading your last few messages, I think it would be better if you pursued this question with experts off-Geni. Perhaps post a message in soc.genealogy.medieval and see what feedback you get.

Yesterday morning, I woke up talking as I do "I am related to the Breretons" LOL

Hate is a strong word, maybe Pamela merely questions people who believe they are right. That can really hinder progress in anything.

More evidence: I just found the arms of William Brereton. I am going to cite you what is considered to be the best source for information about heraldry, and then I am going to show you the evidence. (William being Ada's son).
What you will see: on the shield: the first and fourth "quarter" (meaning sections) running horizontally represent the father's family (in this case Brereton). The second and THIRD represent the mother's arms. In this case, I have to look up #2, but number three CLEARLY shows the arms associated with John le Scot her brother, who would have inherited the right to use them from David of Scotland, as she would have. In 13th century lingo, this is screaming "I'm the son of Ada and descended from her clan". In case you don't understand the purpose of Coats of Arms, it is to identify people in a time when most people didn't read or write. I'm going to attach the pictures to my profile of Ada, just to keep sources clearly differentiated.
Here is the source for the heraldry information: https://archive.org/stream/scienceofheraldr00willrich#page/40/mode/2up

Pamela, I'm afraid you might be misreading the arms in several ways.

Here is a link to your profile for Ada so others can follow along: Unknown Profile

It is clear that this depiction of the arms is not contemporary with Ada. These arms come from a later period, when heraldry was in decline (as defined by our modern notions) and there was great antiquarian interest in showing all the quarters a person was entitled to even if that person never used them.

If you are familiar with heraldry, you will see that this is the impaled shield of a married man. His arms are on the left with 18 "quarters" and his wife's arms are on the right with 9 "quarters".

The arms do not "scream" that this man was a son of Ada. Far from it.

In hundreds of years of heraldic writing, I don't think anyone has found a way to describe the system simply without using charts. But, in brief arms were inherited by a man's sons. If he had no sons, then his daughter (called a heraldic heiress) could pass the arms to her children but quartered with the arms of the children's father. The father's arms would be in the 1st and 4th quarters, and the mother's arms would be in the 2nd and 3rd quarters.

The next time someone in that male line married a heraldic heiress his children would put their mother's arms in the 3rd quarter. The next time someone in that male line married a herald heiress his children would put their first heiress ancestor's arms in the 2nd quarter, the next heiress ancestor in the 3rd quarter, and their mother's arms in the 4th quarter. The next time someone in that male line married a heraldic heiress his children would increase the number of "quarters" to 6, etc.

The system gets a little more complicated if any of the heiress ancestors had a coat of arms that was already quartered. In that case her shield was broken up, and all of her quarters appear in order after her paternal arms.

It's complicated to understand but once you get it, it very easy to read these quartered shields, particularly in conjunction with a pedigree and a basic reference book about the arms of different families.

The illustration you have shows Brereton in the 1st quarter. So these arms belong to a Brereton man. The next quarter appears to be Scotland. The next quarter appears is le Scot.

So, you know this man is descended from a female le Scot who had no brothers, but not how or how far back.

Other than the Georgian style of these arms (and the red rose of Lancaster), there are two other indications that this is a later antiquarian composition.

First, Scotland appears before le Scot. This is a dead give away. In the 13th century it would never occur to anyone that John le Scot had a right to the arms of Scotland in addition to the actual arms of his father. This type of academic elaboration came much later.

Second, even a moment of reflection should show you that Ada did not herself bring in all 17 extra quarters, so this is not the generation of her children. Instead, the position of le Scot in these quarterings shows that the le Scot heiress (whoever she was) was the most distant of several heiress ancestors.

The bottom line for your purposes is that this field is very late. It is evidence only about the belief in a le Scot descent in the generation when it was made. Since English genealogy was a mess up to the time of Horace Round, with many fanciful claims, I wouldn't credit these arms without corroborating evidence.

A fun project you might want to take on is to identify each of the quarters in the shield, then match the claim for inclusion to paper genealogy. If you use Papworth's Ordinary and work from a good genealogy it would be interesting and not very hard.

In the 13th century coats of arms would not be complicated. Their primary purpose was to be depicted on a knight's shield, so he would be identifiable in a battle. The reason for this was to improve his chances of survival, because if he was captured rather than killed he had a money value (ransom). Of course capturing rather than killing people in battle (then as now) was easier said than done; and (then as now) keeping them alive when recently captured was not always done. Henry V had most of his prisoners at Agincourt massacred when a body of new French knights showed up on the horizon and he thought he would have to deal with a new French army with the possibility of his prisoners breaking out from behind. It caused, of course, enormous indignation in his own army among those who would have been entitled to a share of the ransom of the prisoners. I doubt whether human rights considerations entered their minds much.

Mark

All those possible ancestors gone :(

"So, you know this man is descended from a female le Scot who had no brothers, but not how or how far back."

Ada de Huntington had a brother.

Anyone who has the money can make a new tomb for an old ancestor.
From the past to the present there must be many examples of Artistic License being taken in the process, the tomb then ending up being only as accurate as it was made.

"Ada de Huntington had a brother."

If her brother left no issue or if his issue died out, she would become an heiress (or an heiress in her issue) and her descendants would have been entitled to quarter the le Scot arms.

Here is a link to a page from a Cheshire Heraldry expert, who verifies the arms in William Breretons' mothers lineage are the Scot Earl of Chester ( John le Scot being the last Earl of Chester) and number 3 also Scot Earl of Chester. The MSS they are from are also quoted. Now to make it more interesting he questions Hugh Lupus' Earl of Chester on the arms! The plot thickens.....I've asked if there's more info regarding the origins of the arms.
Thornton says he can't comment as he is working for Lyme Park.
http://cheshire-heraldry.org.uk/weblog/2010/11/25/brereton-of-ashley/

Justin, exactly.

It's not a new tomb Lloyd. Thornber, PhD, working at Lyme Park, the Legh estate, Legh being descended from Brereton, says it's most probably what's left of a Chantry Chapel from just before or around the time of Edward II, which would be exactly right. Gilbert Brereton, Ralph's son was the rector of this church at that time. A Chantry Chapel was frequently built outside the church. In the time of Edward, many were destroyed, or became disused. This was called the Dissolution of the Chantries.

FYI, all of you, I've been studying arms for some time now. Of course they are from a later date! IThink of what you are saying. You use pedigrees. This is a symbolic pedigree. Just like a pedigree, its telling a story of a family. I'll let the expert speak on it. . I'm not claiming that these are Ada's arms. I'm saying the Brereton's are using Ada's arms on this shield.

And Mark, heraldry was in use since the First Crusade. No one really knows exactly how the lords were configuring their shields, as they were all doing whatever they wanted to at that time, as there wasn't effective centralized government or standardized rules until much later. That's why there is a famous lawsuit about it, when 2 lords claimed title to using the same arms, Grosvenor vs. Scrope, 1389. However, I feel that to use the arms of the King of Scotland takes a lot of hubris if you are not entititled to them.

Here is an excerpt from Doug Richardson's own work:
>Recently while I was combing through the book, Manuscripts of St.
>George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, by J.N. Dalton (1957), I encountered
>an interesting document on page 409:
>
>"XV.24.34 Attestation by Dame Mary Warburton, widow of Sir John
>Warburton, of Arley in the county of Chester, Knight, Thomas
>Comberbache, Mayor of Congleton in the county of Chester, Henry
>Brereton of the Peel, and John Somerforde of Freeerfeilds, Richard
>Spencer and William Thorley, aldermen of Congleton, Randall Rode of
>Walhill yeoman, Sir James Brucke now or late parson of Sadyngton, co.
>Warwick, Sir Roger Willyam curate of Astburye and James
Brownesworthe,
>sexton or clerk of the same, concerning a monument or tomb in the
>churchyard of Astbury, commonly called the Knight's Burial, wherein
>was buried Sir Ralph Brereton Kt. sometime Lord of Brereton in the
>county of Chester, who married Ada one of the daughters of the Earl
of
>Huntingdon, which also was buried in the same monument. Signed by
>all. 1578."

What he didn't check was the register of who was the rector of the church at the time of the chapel was being built. That is the document I found, in the church registry of St. Mary's at Astbury. It was Gilbert Brereton. Of the two other burials he speaks of, one is a knight and one is a churchman.

Here is the thread of the conversation between Doug Richardson and others discussing this:
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-MEDIEVAL/2002-02/...

Back to Ada's age. I haven't found anything that confirms her age, other that she cannot have been born after 1219, when her father died. Her mother was much, much younger than her father and she could have been born just before he died. Customary of the time, such an important heiress would have been married off almost immediately to someone else and now that we know Henry Hastings died in 1250, she could have been 31 or so years old. That would leave plenty of time for 2 more sons. I have researched the years Gilbert was a rector and the oldest I found was 1297 (besides the St. Mary's record which is earlier but just has a generalized date on it). So that puts him in approximately the right date and absolutely the right place, his first assignment was at St. Oswalds' Congleton. I am still researching William. Gilbert is sponsored by the Venables family as well, providing more evidence for their connection. St. Mary's underwent a big Norman restoration in the 13th century. Until I found the record of Gilbert, Thornton couldn't understand why Ada would have been buried at this particular church, as he understood it to be owned by the Venables. But the church record of him as rector and sponsored by Venables makes all the right connections.

On the alternate profile, I have quoted the Norman custom regarding donation to the church of property or other when a nobleman's son took orders.

So right now, I'd like to say that further research needs to be done, before anyone say yes or no regarding Ada's life, marital status or sons. I think there are a lot more resources available through the church and Manchester Archives, archaeology and land records.

What are the dates for Gilbert de Brereton?

Henry ll de Hastings, heir in 1250 of his mother's and his father's holdings, was underage, his birth date established as 1237 - the year John le Scot, Ada's brother died. His death was 1268. Scroll up in this thread for discussion of those holdings, ward ships, etc - or I will repost the reference for you.

http://books.google.com/books?id=o0lNAAAAMAAJ&vq=Hastings&p...

Good reading on the Hastings, who held the property.

Is there any property in the Breteton's that can be tracked back to David, Earl of Huntington?

The following inscription has been cut in capitals within the arch at the west end:

Hic jacent Radulphus Brreton miles et domina Ada uxor sua, una filiarum Davidis comitis Huntingdonis.

This inscription is mentioned in Church Notes taken 1576, but is
NOTICED AS BEING IN CHARACTERS MORE MODERN THAN the rest of the monument, which in Camden's time was claimed by the families of Venables, Mainwaring and Brereton.

The matter may have been thought to be settled, but I would still like to see new unaltered photos of the tomb inscription so that the original "punctuation" can be determined. The medial dot is one thing, but there are also three dots stacked and other unfamiliar marks. Also, after viewing the unaltered inscription, the time frame in which it was created could be determined.

So in trying unsuccessfully to have answered the questions about the dates of birth / death of the sons of Ralph de Brereton (William and Gilbert) I ran across this:

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/gen-medieval/1999-03/...

> SIR RALPH I de BRERETON, Knight, Lord of Brereton who died after 1275;
> he married:
> ADA of HUNTINGDON, daughter of Prince David, Earl of Huntingdon and wife
> Countess Maud (Keveliock) de Meschines of Chester;
> 
> Child of Ralph I and Ada: (possibly others)
> 1)Sir William II de Brereton, Lord of Brereton who md Margery de Thornton ...

your 26th and 24th appear to have married the same woman. As to your
25th, no daughter of the Earl of Huntingdon married a Brereton (such a
marriage would surely have produced a competitor to the scottish
thrown).

This portion of the descent is untrustworthy.

Now my junior high school taught Latin but for some reason skipped Scottish history. Never too late! There's a nice description here of the "Competitors for the Crown of Scotland"

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/higherscottishhistory/warsofind...

And even better, a pedigree chart highlighting the 13 claimants

http://www.john-pinckney.co.uk/family/ScottishThrone/ScottishThrone...

More detail at Wikipedia but there were a lot of vocabulary words that were beyond me
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitors_for_the_Crown_of_Scotland

=============================

So to me, Ada had no surviving male issue except for Henry ll of Hastings. Or he would have been the 14th competitor in 1291.