Last week, I put together several charts relating to newly appointed U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson. These charts were based on the research of Gary Boyd Roberts, and I had assisted him on some of Boris’s Pennsylvania and Connecticut ancestry, which resulted in five charts showing distant kinships to ten U.S. Presidents.
The sixth chart was perhaps the most complicated. As was previously reported, and included in Gary’s The Royal Descendants of 900 Immigrants (RD900), Boris Johnson’s father is a descendant of King George II through the older sister of King George III. In researching the New England ancestry behind Boris’s mother, Gary found a descent from Mrs. Elizabeth Alsop Baldwin of Milford, Connecticut, who descends from King Edward I of England.
George II descends from Edward I in numerous ways. In making the chart, I picked a line that would include the most monarchs. This is fairly straightforward until you get to King Edward IV, who descends from King Edward III in three unique ways (none via an earlier king): through his sons Lionel of Antwerp, John of Gaunt, and Edmund of Langley. Edward IV is a great-great grandson of Edward III through John and Edmund, but a great-great-great-great grandson of Edward III through Lionel. Had I charted the descent through John or Edmund, Boris Johnson’s parents would be shown as twenty-third cousins. However, Gary preferred I chart the line through Lionel (as the second son of Edward III, this was the way the House of York claimed their right to the throne during the Wars of the Roses, despite their patrilineal descent from the fourth son Edmund). So I had the chart go through Lionel, and Boris’s parents are shown as twenty-third cousins twice removed. (Would anyone besides Gary have actually cared if I did the chart through John or Edmund instead?)
But how many different lines to King Edward I could I have actually charted out? While Gary’s RD900 indicates one descent behind Mrs. Elizabeth Alsop Baldwin, Douglas Richardson’s Royal Ancestry indicates a total of three descents (with many more to William the Conqueror).
The Edward I lines through Boris Johnson’s father are more numerous. They all go through his ancestor Prince Paul of Württemberg (1785-1852), with German noble ancestry on both sides of his family. The connections back to English kings go through Paul’s great-grandfather Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales (father of King George III), as well as two great-grandmothers—Prussian princesses and sisters Sophia Dorothea and Philippine Charlotte—who were granddaughters of King George I of Great Britain. Two other great-grandfathers—Frederick William, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt and Charles I, Duke of Brunswick—eventually tie back to English royalty through their common ancestor Maria of Austria, Duchess of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, descending via her Spanish ancestry from John of Gaunt. Through these connections (and there very well could be many more), Prince Paul descends from Edward I in ninety-six different ways.
This brings the total to at least ninety-nine unique descents to Boris Johnson from King Edward I. In terms of making a chart showing this common descent to Johnson’s parents, I could have made 297 different charts. I’m fine with the first one.
