The following outline summarises several of my possible descents from British royalty (full details of each person are to be found in the file posted on Wikitree. After clicking on the Wikitree link you can click on the small red/blue triangles after a persons name to see more ancestors of that person.
I have also tried to indicate the points where some uncertainty exists (due to the paucity of the records) but also remembering that with any pedigree chart there must always be a degree of uncertainty about the male parent of any person listed!
With each generation we go back we double the number of ancestors we had in the preceding generation. Thus in the first generation we have 2x1 = 2 ancestors (our parents), in the second generation 2x2 = 4 grandparents, then 2x2x2 = 8 great grandparents etc.
If we take a generation to approximately equate to 30 years then a 300-year period would represent the passing of about ten generations. So taking the year 1400 as an example, it would mean that about twenty generations had passed. That in turn means that each of us alive today would have approximately 2x2 twenty times = 1,048,576 ancestors in that generation. Go back another 30 years and the number doubles again to 2,097,152 and go back another thirty years (to 1340) and the number is 4,194,304 and another 30 years to the time of King Edward I of England and the number is 8,388,608 - more than the estimated population of England at that time. (estimated to be between 5 and 7 million in 1300)
Of course there are going to be a number of instances where people who married were distantly related which will reduce the number of our ancestors but it still remains highly likely that at least one, probably more, of our ancestors was a member of the royalty.
It also means that even if we assume each of my ancestors had only three children who produced offspring (in fact it was likey to be far more than three) then it would mean that in my (26th) generation of descent from Edward I, assuming no intermarriage, there would be 2,511,865,830,000 descendants!
For a fuller explanation of why almost all people of European descent are descended from Charlemagne (and hence royal families of Europe) see the articles Are you a descendant of Charlemagne? and We are all descended from Charlemagne and related to each other
Descent from KING EDWARD I of ENGLAND and MARGUERITE of FRANCE
The descent from Edward I to this point seems fairly well documented and seems to be a matter of historical record that is not in dispute. John Potential confusion
arises here because Thomas Palfreyman may have been
married twice, to two different women both named
Katherine Goodricke!
The Harlian
Pedigrees refer to Thomas's first wife being a daughter of Ambrose Jermyn
however further research revels that elsewhere in the Pedigrees it is shown
that she is the daughter of John Fulnetby His second wife is
referred to as a sister of Edward Goodrick, who was
Ambrose Jermyn's son in law. Katherine was the daughter of Lionel A will is in existence
of Anne Palfreyman the widow of Thomas Hutchinson of
Louth. The will of Thomas Palfreyman refers to his
son-in-law Thomas Hutchinson. Descent from this point seems reasonably
well-established through the existence of wills and baptismal and marriage
records – however there is always the possibility of confusion when
people of the same name lived in the same general area. Royal ROYAL DESCENT of
LIONEL WELLS from KING JOHN of England and Clemence. Royal descent of LIONEL DYMOKE from KING HENRY II of England In total my ancestry includes 16 Kings of England, 21 Kings of France and 17 Kings of Scotland. The French connection comes through the marriage of an English or Scottish King to a French princess eg Edward II married Isabella a daughter of Philip IV of France. A selection of these ancestors are noted below:- Henry III, King of
England (1207-1272) King John of England
(1166-1216) (signed the Magna Carta, although
reluctantly!) Henry II (King of
England) Empress Matilda Henry I, (King of
England) Stephen, King of
England William I, King of
England (William the Conqueror) St Margaret, Queen of
Scotland Robert II (King of
France) Emperor Charlemagne
(Charles the Great) St Louis IX (King of
France and grandfather of Marguerite of France, the wife of King Edward I) Royal descent from Kings of Scotland As mentioned above our family is descended from eleven Kings of Scotland including Malcolm I (d 954) and his descendants Kenneth II (d 995); Malcolm II (d 1034); Duncan I 1001-1040); Malcolm III (1031-1093); David I (1084 -1153); Robert the Bruce (1274-1329); Robert II (1316-1390); Robert III (1337-1406); James I (1394-1436); James II (1430-1460); James III (1452-1488) and most recently James IV (1472-1513). Some lines of descent from some of these earlier kings have been already noted above, for example Edith Matilda a daughter of Malcolm III and St Margaret of Scotland married King Henry I of England and Matilda a grand-daughter of Malcolm and Margaret through their daughter Mary, married King Stephen of England and were ancestors of King Edward I from whom our families descent has been described. All of the kings of Scotland mentioned above are ancestors of my 6th great grandmother Janet (Jessie Campbell). Due to intermarriage of members of earlier generations there are multiple pathways of descent – too many to list here. Janet is descended from 10 of the 22 children of King Robert II for example. Janet is descended from Kings of Scotland on the side of both her father (Archibald Campbell of Lerags) and mother (Margaret Campbell) as shown below Paternal ancestry of (Janet) Jessie Campbell Maternal ancestry of Janet (Jessie) Campbell
The Wells and Dymoke families both have a range of links to
royalty. Some of the various ways in which family members are descended
from royalty are shown below.