Ancestor Index

Maternal Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandparents - Manners / Russell

Their 2nd son - Lord William Manners

John Manners, 2nd Duke of Rutland and Catherine Russell

The image (right) is based on a miniature portrait (enamel on metal plate) of the 2nd. Duke by Charles Boit (1662-1727).

John Manners was the son of John Manners, 1st Duke and his third wife, Catherine Noel.

Manners - Leo van de Pas details the lineage of the Manners family (from 1355) which was also closely associated with the family of Neville which was, in turn, associated with Smith/e - Smyth/e in the Medieval era as were the Tollemaches with the Smyth/es and Cromwells.

Catherine Russell was the daughter of William Lord Russell (b 1639) and Rachel Wriothesley (1636/7 - 1723) who had married firstly Francis, Lord Vaughan and secondly, in 1669, William, Lord Russell, son of William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford. Lord William Russell was executed for high treason in 1683 after being found guilty of involvement in the Rye House Plot - in opposition to James II.

Rachel Wriothesley was the 2nd daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton and Rachel de Massue. Her uncle was Henry de Massue de Ruvigny, Earl of Galway - her mother's brother - who served William III in Ireland 1699-1701. Thomas Wriothesley was a son of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl (1572-1624) and Elizabeth Vernon. Henry Wriothesley (image adjacent left) 3rd. Earl of Southampton, was the renowned and "beautiful" patron of William Shakespeare.

Kin in this maternal line connects to de Vere (Earls of Oxford). There are those who espouse the theory that Edward de Vere - 17th Earl of Oxford - "wrote" Shakespeare. The line also connects with the Bertie family. Sir Peregrine Bertie married the sister of Edward de Vere - and Oxford was married to further kin, (Cecil) Lord Burghley's daughter. The Berties (11th B Willoughby) "looked after" a young orphan, (the later Captain) John Smith of Lincolnshire before he took off on his adventures which encompassed distinguished military service in Europe and the eventual founding of the American colony of Virginia, in 1607 and to having his life "saved" there by Princess Pocahontas. Connected kin also places the Walsingham family at stage centre - and it was spy-master Walsingham who dangled Marlow/e on a string or two and who may (or may not) have had him "silenced" in 1593.

Maternal line side note - Maternal line kinship to William Shakespeare ... circuitous - but true ... Henry VII’s son, Henry, married as his second wife, Anne Boleyn whose sister, Mary, married William Cary. Son of this marriage was Henry, Lord Hunsdon whose son, George, had a daughter named Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas Berkeley. Sir Thomas Berkeley’s father was Henry Lord Berkeley, who died in 1613. He was married to Katherine, the daughter of Henry, Earl of Surrey who died in 1596. Henry Lord Berkeley had a sister by the name of Muriel who married Sir Robert Throckmorton of Coughton. A daughter of this marriage, Anne, married Ralph Sheldon who was the son of William Sheldon. William Sheldon’s sister, Katherine, married Adrian Quiney who died in 1553. His son Richard (d.1567) had a son; he was also named Richard (d.1602) and this Richard had a son named Thomas Quiney. Thomas Quiney married Judith, the younger daughter of Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare.

So, one way or another, Shakespeare, de Vere and Southampton (inter alia) were all connected by marriage ... circuitous - but true ...

The Private E-mails of William Shakespeare - Smith - Smyth - Smythe and the Tudor Internet - written at the end of 2003, proof at last - through the Smith/Smyth/e families - as to who wrote Shakespeare and how it all came about. The "lost years" of William Shakespeare can now be explained through Smith genealogy. Quite apart from the fact that his mother was an Arden (Arderne) and linked - albeit humbly - to the illustrious Stanley family of the Earls of Derby, the e-mail fragments William Shakespeare so inadvertently left behind, floating in the ether and quite unreachable until this modern age of sophisticated software, have made it possible to arrange a comfortable (some may say convenient) marriage between the annals of history and the hidden quirks of genealogy. The child of this liaison is something of a squalling brat, destined to howl like a banshee down the hallowed corridors of learning and so turn the world of Shakespeare studies upside down.