"Who Do You Think You Are" Series 13, Episode #1: Danny Dyer

[andrewalston]

A good discussion on today's edition of "More or Less" (Radio 4, now available on iPlayer Radio), regarding the statistical probability of being descended from Edward III.

If you have UK ancestry, the chances are heavily in favour of you having him as a direct ancestor.

The problem is having documentation of it. DD was extremely lucky on that front.

[sallyyorks]

A good discussion on today's edition of "More or Less" (Radio 4, now available on iPlayer Radio), regarding the statistical probability of being descended from Edward III.

If you have UK ancestry, the chances are heavily in favour of you having him as a direct ancestor.

I still do not understand how it is possible  .
For this to be true, his children and their descendants would have had to have had a lot of marriage/relations with commoners.
The approx population of the UK in the 14th century was 3.5 million, the majority of people would have been some kind of agricultural labourer.
How likely is it that over the centuries the aristocracy married into, or even met in person, the peasantry?
The "statistics" do not seem to take into account that people married within their own social class and did so for many centuries

[Romilly]

A good discussion on today's edition of "More or Less" (Radio 4, now available on iPlayer Radio), regarding the statistical probability of being descended from Edward III.
If you have UK ancestry, the chances are heavily in favour of you having him as a direct ancestor.

I still do not understand how it is possible  .
For this to be true, his children and their descendants would have had to have had a lot of marriage/relations with commoners.
The approx population of the UK in the 14th century was 3.5 million, the majority of people would have been some kind of agricultural labourer.
How likely is it that over the centuries the aristocracy married into, or even met in person, the peasantry?

Just from my own family history research, it is apparant just how easy it was to slide down the social scale... just take a few early deaths/bankruptcies, etc... and see what happened to the next generations.

Romilly.

[sallyyorks]

Just from my own family history research, it is apparant just how easy it was to slide down the social scale... just take a few early deaths/bankruptcies, etc... and see what happened to the next generations.

Romilly.

But how often did anyone manage to breach the class divide?
If you have millions of peasant/working class and a few thousand aristocracy and they rarely had any contact with each other,  then I can't see it
The statistics do not seem to take into account rigid class divisions and that the separate classes were marrying into their own kind and that they rarely intermarried. These two demographics mostly grew separately

[pharmaT]

A good discussion on today's edition of "More or Less" (Radio 4, now available on iPlayer Radio), regarding the statistical probability of being descended from Edward III.

If you have UK ancestry, the chances are heavily in favour of you having him as a direct ancestor.

I still do not understand how it is possible  .
For this to be true, his children and their descendants would have had to have had a lot of marriage/relations with commoners.
The approx population of the UK in the 14th century was 3.5 million, the majority of people would have been some kind of agricultural labourer.
How likely is it that over the centuries the aristocracy married into, or even met in person, the peasantry?

Before I answer this I want to make clear that to the best of my knowledge I have no link to royalty.

It is possible, firstly because of illigitimate births.  Secondly you have to consider how many generations back from today's generation and the laws of primagenature.  so it's a gradual process rather than a large number of titled people marrying an ag lab.  Say 20 generations back an aristocrat has 4 sons.  All his sons will benefit from a good education etc from their upbringinging but only the oldest son would inherit the title, estate (means to continue to prosper).  The younger sons would likely have money and their education but have a slightly less prosperous start in adult life potentially ending up well off but not as well off as their oldest sibling.  This pattern would continue with the youngest son of the youngest son and so on.  With each generation there is a high chance they would become less prosperous and less attractive as a marriage proposition to the aristocracy.  It became common for the youngest son of middle ranking noblemen to enter the ministery which would increase the chances of them marrying one of the middle rather than the upper classes the continue the pattern on down the generations.  Then add in those who ended up stripped of their estates, for example in the Civil war or lost their money to gambling debts it becomes more and more likely that the so many x grt grandson or daughter of a high ranking noble man marries a miner, ag lab or so on.

[Mowsehowse]

Just from my own family history research, it is apparant just how easy it was to slide down the social scale... just take a few early deaths/bankruptcies, etc... and see what happened to the next generations.  Romilly. 

Wasn't that the point of starting the programme by focusing on the Workhouse??

[sallyyorks]

Before I answer this I want to make clear that to the best of my knowledge I have no link to royalty.

It is possible, firstly because of illigitimate births.  Secondly you have to consider how many generations back from today's generation and the laws of primagenature.  so it's a gradual process rather than a large number of titled people marrying an ag lab.  Say 20 generations back an aristocrat has 4 sons.  All his sons will benefit from a good education etc from their upbringinging but only the oldest son would inherit the title, estate (means to continue to prosper).  The younger sons would likely have money and their education but have a slightly less prosperous start in adult life potentially ending up well off but not as well off as their oldest sibling.  This pattern would continue with the youngest son of the youngest son and so on.  With each generation there is a high chance they would become less prosperous and less attractive as a marriage proposition to the aristocracy.  It became common for the youngest son of middle ranking noblemen to enter the ministery which would increase the chances of them marrying one of the middle rather than the upper classes the continue the pattern on down the generations.  Then add in those who ended up stripped of their estates, for example in the Civil war or lost their money to gambling debts it becomes more and more likely that the so many x grt grandson or daughter of a high ranking noble man marries a miner, ag lab or so on.

I could understand this point if the numbers of the two social classes was equal, but it wasn't
If you have millions of peasants on the one hand and a few thousand aristocrats on the other, that a few aristocrats married a few peasants does not alter the fact that you are still left with millions of peasants who didn't marry into any aristocracy.
In any given year, say a half dozen aristocrats married into the peasant class. This is only a fraction of peasant class who have aristocracy in their family in that year
It is the huge numbers of peasant/working class compared to the very small numbers of aristocratic class. There was just too many commoners for them to marry into to make a big difference?

[pharmaT]

Before I answer this I want to make clear that to the best of my knowledge I have no link to royalty.

It is possible, firstly because of illigitimate births.  Secondly you have to consider how many generations back from today's generation and the laws of primagenature.  so it's a gradual process rather than a large number of titled people marrying an ag lab.  Say 20 generations back an aristocrat has 4 sons.  All his sons will benefit from a good education etc from their upbringinging but only the oldest son would inherit the title, estate (means to continue to prosper).  The younger sons would likely have money and their education but have a slightly less prosperous start in adult life potentially ending up well off but not as well off as their oldest sibling.  This pattern would continue with the youngest son of the youngest son and so on.  With each generation there is a high chance they would become less prosperous and less attractive as a marriage proposition to the aristocracy.  It became common for the youngest son of middle ranking noblemen to enter the ministery which would increase the chances of them marrying one of the middle rather than the upper classes the continue the pattern on down the generations.  Then add in those who ended up stripped of their estates, for example in the Civil war or lost their money to gambling debts it becomes more and more likely that the so many x grt grandson or daughter of a high ranking noble man marries a miner, ag lab or so on.

I could understand this point if the numbers of the two social classes was equal, but it wasn't
If you have millions of peasants on the one hand and a few thousand aristocrats on the other, that a few aristocrats married a few peasants does not alter the fact that you are still left with millions of peasants who didn't marry into any aristocracy.
In any given year, say a half dozen aristocrats married into the peasant class. This is only a fraction of peasant class who have aristocracy in their family in that year
It is the huge numbers of peasant/working class compared to the very small numbers of aristocratic class. There was just too many commoners for them to marry into to make a big difference?

I'm sorry but you seem to have understood what I said. I was not talking of a high ranking aristocrat  marrying a peasant.  Although there would have been occasions of sudden loss of status it is mostly a gradual loss of status of the younger siblings and you are statistically more likely to be a younger sibling than the oldest.  Edward III for example died the equivalent of about 15 generations ago so someone losing status over 5 generations still has 20 generations of descendents living today.  It's not the children of Edward iii (in the most part anyway) marrying peasants of the day that leads to averge joe being of roayl descent but the descendants of these children marrying teh descendants of these peasants.

[mike175]

Just to look at it from a different angle, if you trace back about 20 generations you would have around a million direct ancestors, more or less according to the degree of intermarrying of cousins, etc. That would have been something like a quarter of the entire population. (rough estimates)