Cecil ancestry

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John Higgins

Cecil ancestry

Legg inn av John Higgins » 26 jul 2007 05:14:53

The Cecil family first became prominent in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when William Cecil, Lord Burghley was her chief minister. Lord Burghley apparently spent a great deal of effort (and presumably money) to determine his male-line ancestry - not necessarily with great success or accuracy. Setting aside the efforts to trace the Cecil ancestry to early Welsh families, the generations immediately prior to Lord Burghley, as recorded in the peerages, appear to be as follows:

William Cecil, Lord Bughley
son of
Richard Cecil and his wife Jane, dau. of William heckington
son of
David Cecil and his 1st wife Alice, dau. of Sir John Dickons
son of
Richard Seisyll and his 2nd wife Margaret ferch William ap Philip Vaughan of Tyle-glas
son of
Philip Seisyll and his wife Margaret, dau. of John Philips [or Phelip]
son of
Thomas Seisyll of Alltyryns and his wife Margaret, dau. of Gilbert Winston

[The surnames here are as in Burke's Peerage - other versions of the line show other versions of the surname, which clearly was not fixed at this time]

However, an article cited last year in this group by Will Johnson notes (rather offhandedly) an interesting change in this pedigree. The article is "Alltyryns and the Cecils", by A. L. Rowse, published in The English Historical Review, vol. 75 [Jan. 1960], pp. 54-76. The article is available online through JSTOR, for those who may have access to that archive.

Rowse notes that Lord Burghley obtained a copy of the 1508 will of Richard Seisyll (the husband of Margaret ferch William Vaughan) and made a note at the end of it indicating that this Richard was the elder brother, not the father, of Lord Burghley's grandfather David. Apparently confusion arose because one of the pedigree researchers enlisted by Lord Burghley had wrongly indicated that David's elder brother was named Philip ap Richard, interchanging the wives of the Richard and Philip noted above. Lord Burghley apparently found that this was wrong and noted the will accordingly. However the earlier version appears to have been carried forward through a number of iterations of various publications - including more recently Paget's ancestry of Prince Charles - and of course BP.

According to Rowse, Richard Seisyll the apparent elder brother of David was the progenitor of the senior line of the Cecils who held the manor of Alltyryns for a few more generations before dying out in the male line and leaving the property to the junior line (Lord Burghley's descendants). Rowse lays out the pedigree of both lines for several generations and discusses the interactions betwen the various family members, especially as to the disposition of the property at Alltyryns. If Rowse is correct, the line above should be amended to omit Richard Seisyll and his wife from the ancestry of the more famous branch of the Cecil family. Since Lord Burghley as well as his sisters have many notable (and not so notable) descendants, this change would affect the ancestry of quite a lot of folks.

Any comments on the accuracy of Rowse's change to the Cecil ancestry?

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