Another pedigree of the famous British.
In England they always attached great importance to the antiquity of the clan and, if there was even the slightest opportunity, they tried to raise their clan to the descendants of those who came to the British Isles in the 11th century along with William the Conqueror.
The Marlborough clan derives its pedigree from the Norman comrades-in-arms of Wilhelm, although this statement is questioned by a number of researchers.
And so about the ancestors.
The first ancestor of Churchill, about whom there is reliably established information, was John Churchill, who lived in England in the county of Dorset in the 17th century. He was married to Sarah Winston, daughter of Sir Henry Winston of Gloucester.
Their son, Winston, joined the army during the bourgeois revolution and fought on the side of King Charles I. By 1643 he rose to the rank of captain of the cavalry and soon married Lady Drake, who came from the family of Francis Drake, a famous pirate who had acquired a fortune by robbing the Spanish possessions in the West Indies and raised by Queen Elizabeth I to knightly dignity. After the restoration of the monarchy, Winston Churchill, as his faithful supporter, was elected to Parliament, and then held a high post in Ireland and upon returning to England was appointed manager of the royal property.
For his merits, the king granted him the right to be called sir and to have his own coat of arms. Churchill probably believed that he deserved more, so he chose the motto for the coat of arms: “Faithful, but unlucky.”
The marriage of Winston and Elizabeth was large – 12 children, however, only five of them reached adulthood, the rest died in infancy. All the children were very enterprising and were able to achieve much in life.
Their daughter Arabella was in the retinue of the brother of King Charles II of the Duke of York, who later became King James II. Contemporaries noted that she was not distinguished by beauty – “a tall creature with a pale face, well, just skin and bones.” Despite this, she managed to become the duke’s favorite, from whom she had four children. All of them occupied prominent places among the English nobility. Arabella also helped her brother John make a quick military career. Having made a brilliant career, Churchill went over to the side of Prince William of Orange, who occupied the British throne under the name of William III. The new king made John Churchill Earl of Marlborough and promoted to lieutenant general, appointing army commander in Flanders.
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
It is widely believed that Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, probably the most famous of the British prime ministers, who led the British Empire to victory in World War II, had an extremely noble, almost royal origin. But it is not so. Winston’s father, Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill, was the third son of John Winston Spencer-Churchill, 7th Duke of Marlborough and a longtime member of the British Parliament. On this line, the future British prime minister was a descendant of the famous commander of the late XVII – early XVIII century John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Winston wrote his biography Marlboro: His Life and Time.
Unlike his father, Churchill’s mother did not differ in aristocratic descent. But Lady Randolph Churchill, in her childhood Jenny Jerome, had another important advantage – she was the daughter of a simple American millionaire, and the Churchill family was no longer rich, and the third son of the Duke of Marlborough did not shine with a title or a solid inheritance. At one time, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli ironically remarked about Marlboro: “They are not rich enough to be dukes.” I had to slowly sell land, family jewelry and paintings. His wife’s condition helped satisfy political ambitions. In addition, Jenny was one of the first beauties of her time. Queen of Romania Maria testified: “Lady Randolph had a dazzling beauty, it could soon be mistaken for Italian or Spanish. Her eyes were large and dark, the bend of her lips was elegant and almost mischievous, her hair was blue-black and shiny, there was something Creole in her. She was very lively and laughed a lot, showing her white teeth and always looking happy and having a good time.” All these advantages outweighed the absence of noble ancestors. Her father, Leonard Jerome, a major stock player, founder of the American Jockey Club, owner of the New York Times and the Pacific Postal Shipping Company, as well as Madison Avenue Theater, a friend and business partner of the famous multimillionaire Cornelius Vanderbilt, was a descendant of the expelled from France Huguenot Timothy Jerome, who landed in the British colonies in North America in 1717. This, incidentally, refutes the version that appeared at the beginning of the 90s that Churchill’s grandfather was a Jew who changed his original Jewish surname Jacobson to the English Jerome. For large-scale speculation in New York real estate Leonard Jerome was nicknamed King of Wall Street. The wedding of Jenny and Randolph in 1874 was one of the first weddings of the British aristocrat and the daughter of an American millionaire. Soon, such marriages became commonplace. Millionaires from across the ocean searched for high-profile titles, and impoverished aristocrats searched for money.
Winston’s mother did not remain a widow for too long. In 1900, she married the brave captain of the Scottish Guard, 26-year-old George Cornwallis-West, who was the same age as Winston and was inferior to his wife as much as 20 years old. But after 14 years, the couple divorced, and one of the reasons for the divorce was Jenny’s financial situation, which worsened after her father’s death. In 1918, she married for the last time – for the 41-year-old Montague Phippen Corruption, who managed to make a fortune in Africa. This marriage, unlike the previous one, Winston’s mother called successful, but not romantic. But together the couple did not live long. In 1921, Jenny fell down the stairs and broke her leg. Gangrene began, and doctors could not save Lady Randolph Churchill.
Some American historians claim that Jenny generally had among the ancestors of the Iroquois Indians, which supposedly contributed to her extraordinary beauty, dark skin and black hair. Allegedly, Winston’s mother was awarded Indian blood by Jenny’s maternal grandmother Clarissa Willcox, who was apparently raped by an Iroquois Indian. This version has no documentary evidence, and black hair and dark skin are much easier to explain by the presence of a native of Southern Europe in the pedigree. As you know, Churchill was born seven months on November 30, 1874. This gave rise to suspicions that his parents had a sexual relationship even before the wedding, April 15 of that year, and that Winston was actually born on time. In prim and prudish Victorian England, premarital sex was certainly condemned, which did not prevent the aristocrats and the bourgeois from debauching right and left. However, the letters of Randolph and Jenny contain an indication that their first-born was really born prematurely. Randolph blamed this on a local Woodstock doctor who overlooked pregnant Lady Churchill.
There is a version that, between Churchill and the presidents of the United States: Franklin Roosevelt, Ulysses Grant and George W. Bush – senior and youngest, as well as Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut to make a suborbital flight – a family relationship. No evidence of this was found, but Churchill himself proudly claimed: “I am the embodiment of the union of Anglo-Saxon countries.”
According to a study in the UK by order of the American company MyFamily, the famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Princess of Wales Diana and American President George W. Bush turned out to be distant relatives.
The genealogy of the mentioned persons goes back to the Englishman Henry Spencer of Badby, who lived between 1420-1478. According to the family tree, one of Henry Spencer’s sons founded a clan to which Winston Churchill and Princess Diana belong, whose maiden name is known to Spencer. The descendants of another son of Spencer at the beginning of the XVII century moved from England to the New World. One of the ancestors of George W. Bush was married to a woman from this genus in the 19th century.
It is worth noting that the current American leader is a fan of Winston Churchill and holds in the Oval Office of the White House a bronze bust of the British Prime Minister, presented by the current head of the British government, Tony Blair. According to some experts, the roots of George W. Bush date back to the English royal family until the XII century. According to a MyFamily spokesperson, the study is ongoing, and other details of Henry Spencer’s life and work may soon become known.
Sources:
rbc.ru
fisechko.ru
biography.wikireading.ru
Good luck in finding.
