The Lee Family of Virginia: Descended from a Norman Knight?
About this episode
This episode explores the Lee family's claimed descent from a Norman knight and the historical evidence surrounding their genealogy.
This episode examines the Lee family of Virginia and their claim to descend from a Norman named Reynard de Lega through the landed gentry of Shropshire, namely the Lees of Coton Hall and Nordley Regis, the arms of whom they long claimed, and to whom they insisted they were related. It traces the evidence that supported the pedigree, including a silver cup, a Latin inscription, a tombstone, heraldic writing, and a family Bible, all of which helped persuade the College of Heralds to confirm the Lee arms in 1930. The episode then turns to doubts raised by historians, including repeated place-name errors, such as "Morton Regis", and a genealogy based on an English letter that guessed at the family's earlier history. It then discussed a later investigation that used wills, baptismal records, probate files, and parish registers to argue that Richard Lee I was the son of a Worcester cloth merchant named John Lee and Jane Hancock rather than the Shropshire gentry. Finally, it discusses the generally merchant family origins of many of the First Families of Virginia, including the Carters, and how both those mercantile roots and the old Norman, gentry legend can be true because of how…
More episodes of The Old World with Will Tanner
- The Merchant Diplomat: William Lee's Secret Dutch Treaty and the Victory at Yorktown
- Arthur Lee: The Forgotten Founder, Spy, and Diplomat Who Armed the Revolution
- The Virginia Gentry: America's Only Aristocracy and What We can Learn from Them
- The Conway Cabal: Did Richard Henry Lee Betray George Washington?
- The First and Forgotten Founding Father: Richard Henry Lee's Creation of America
- Founding Brothers: How One Generation of Lees Won the Revolution and Built America
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