The Pop Idol winner discovered on this week’s episode of BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? that he is related to King Edward I and William the Conquerer – so Mirror man Matt decided to dig into his ancestors too
As if Will Young didn’t already have reason to be smug, the Pop Idol and two-time Brit Award winner now has something else he can boast about – he’s related to royalty.
Specifically, King Edward I, his 20-times great-grandfather. Oh, and William the Conquerer too.
The singer found out about his kingly lineage filming this week’s episode of BBC1’s Who Do You Think You Are? And he’s not the only celebrity who, besides being blessed with success, can also add royal blood to their claims to fame.
Josh Widdecombe is another, having learned he’s also directly descended from Edward I. Before him there was Danny Dyer, who discovered his ancestors include King Edward III, William the Conquerer and French king Louis IX.
Then there’s Matthew Pinsent – four-time Olympic gold medallist and, it turns out, also related to Edward I, William the Conqueror and one of Henry VIII’s wives.
What is it about being a celebrity, I wondered, that makes you more likely to have royal relatives? Knowing Will was going to be the latest to fill me with jealousy, I set out to find out if mere mortals like me had any remotely interesting ancestors.
In my case, the chances of even finding anyone slightly aristocratic in my family tree seemed pretty bleak. Will was already born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a boarding school boy whose dad was a company director and whose grandad was an RAF flight lieutenant.
Most of the relatives I knew about, on the other hand, were proud yet poor Nottinghamshire coal miners and their wives.
Still, I set up an account on FindMyPast and added the names of the relatives I knew about over the last 150 years. As the site suggested potential matches based on birth, marriage, baptism and census records, I gradually worked my way back around 12 generations to the mid-1600s.
Alas, what I discovered only confirmed my suspicions. My family were paupers, not princes – grafters who toiled for centuries in coal mines, stables, forges and along canals.
My great-grandfather, I discovered, was a coal miner loader who had worked his way up to coal hewer – hacking coal from the mine bed by hand, hundreds of metres underground – just like his father and grandfather before him.
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Earlier still were nailmakers, boatmen, stonemasons and stablemen. Almost all lived and died in Derbyshire, Yorkshire or Lancashire. We were clearly the servants, not the masters. I had more in common with Baldrick than Blackadder.
But just as I was about to give up, I stumbled on something unexpected. In the late 1500s, Derbyshire man William Gilbert, my 13th great-grandfather, married Anne Clere – and into a well-known family.
The Cleres, it turned out, were an ancient family from Norfolk whose patriarch, Sir Robert Clere, was the High Sheriff of Norfolk and known for his great wealth.
Anne’s father, Sir Edward Clere, was an MP, but apparently not a very articulate one when speaking in the House of Commons. One diarist wrote how he made “”a staggering [stumbling] speech… I could not understand what reason he made.”
He was knighted in 1578 after having Queen Elizabeth I stay over at his home in Thetford, Norfolk, when he entertained her with a theatrical performance and jousting.
Fascinated that my family was at least good friends with royalty, I kept digging. Edward’s father was Sir John Clere, an MP and naval commander who drowned in August 1557 when his fleet tried to conquer the Orkney Islands, but was beaten back to sea by 3,000 angry islanders.
But it was her mother, Alice Boleyn, my 14th great-grandmother, whose name jumped out at me. Sure enough, as I followed the tree, her niece was none other than Anne Boleyn, Queen of England until she was beheaded in 1533 by Henry VIII – and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I.
I was astounded – that makes me Elizabeth I’s first cousin, 16 times removed.
On the other side of the Clere family, however, things were taking a more sinister – but no less fascinating – turn.
Sir John Clere’s wife, Anne Tyrell, also had royal connections, it turned out, but ones that probably changed the line of succession forever.
On her father’s side, her grandfather was Sir James Tyrell, a trusted servant of Richard III, who allegedly confessed to the murders of the Princes in the Tower under Richard’s orders.
James is also portrayed in Shakespeare’s Richard III. I was astounded – I studied the play at school and had no idea I was reading about my 17th great-grandfather.
Treason and treachery, it seems, ran in the family. His father William was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1462 for plotting against King Edward IV.
William’s father, Sir John Tyrell of Heron, was High Sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire and knight of Essex, and three times Speaker of the House of Commons. That my 19th great-grandfather basically once ruled Essex is something I won’t be letting people forget in Stansted, where I now live.
But it was also through Anne Tyrell’s mother’s side that I found something even more astonishing. As I followed her line, the names began to get more and more aristocratic, through the Willoughbys, De Welles, Greystokes and Longsprees, until I found…. My 26th great-grandfather, King Henry II.
His father was Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou and his grandfather, King Henry I. And Henry’s father? No other than William the Conquerer – my 29th great-grandfather.
And perhaps even more bizarrely, that would make Will Young my 9th cousin, 9 times removed. I’ll be inviting him round for tea next week.
Genealogists will tell me to calm down – apparently there are about five million people who are descended from William the Conquerer. Establishing myself as the true heir to the British throne could certainly be tricky.
But just being as special as Will, Danny Dyer and Matthew Pinsent is enough for me. And not bad for the son of Nottinghamshire nailmakers, stablemen and coal miners.
How to trace your family tree on Findmypast:
Register for a free Findmypast account and create your tree.
Add your own information, then details about your parents, grandparents and other relatives that you know. You don’t need every detail such as date or place of birth, but the more you have the better.
Findmypast then searches its records and provides hints about your ancestors, helping you expand your tree. To access the records you’ll need to pay a subscription.
Most of the records go back to the 1700s, but family trees created by other people can help you trace back even further.
Use the internet to search some of the key names – you might find more clues and other historical connections.