In article <000c01c67f7a$6823eb80$020010ac@pierce>,
smyth@nc.rr.com ("Richard Smyth at Road Runner") wrote:
If Judith Knapp's medieval descent is through
the same line (is it?) maybe she should count together with them.
I believe that when people talk about a gateway ancestor's descent from
royalty, they (tacitly or explicitly) build in a stipulation that they have
in mind the shortest line to royalty. The Lawrences probably have lines to
earlier royalty that Judith Knapp does not share.
However, I don't know whether or how the problem of two lines of the same
length (say, the same number of years or the same number of generations)
would be treated. Nor whether differences in the birth date, death date or
coronation date of the sovereign are difference-makers in comparing lengths
of royal descents. As I said, I think the concept of a gateway to royalty
is under-determined.
I tend to think of 'gateways' not (just) as specific paths to some
particular king, but as general points of entry into the vast
interrelated tree of medieval aristocrats, including monarchs but lots
of other people as well. Since once you 'break through' to the big
interrelated medieval tree, you inevitably hit monarchs as well, calling
such lines 'royal lines' serves as a convenient proxy. And Gary's
system, the relative measure of such royal lines by what is the most
recent king found in the AT, is a good measure of how soon (relative to
the present) the line 'bushes out' into many geographic regions, or into
the upper echelons of the nobility. English or Anglo-American gateways
descended thrice over from Edward III tend to have more famous
15th-century figures in their known AT, and more Continental lines, for
example, than someone whose ancestry leads back through a raft of minor
Yorkshire gentry to William the Lion via Ros of Hamlake. The latter,
indeed, may present more challenging and interesting genealogical
puzzles than the well-trodden paths to the Wars of the Roses cast &
crew. At any rate the nearest king in the tree is only part of the
interest of such paths to medieval aristocratic ancestry; that's why I'm
content to leave the term 'gateway' under-defined--at least as regards
"gateway to what?" The acronym 'GARD' [for 'gateway ancestor of royal
descent'] seems to place too much emphasis on the 'royal line' aspect
(besides reminding me too much of gastrooesophageal reflux disease).
Nat Taylor
a genealogist's sketchbook:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltaylor/leaves/my children's 17th-century American immigrant ancestors:
http://home.earthlink.net/~nathanieltay ... rantsa.htm