Hypotheses

American genealogists of the families Strange have always expressed awe and admiration for the ancient family le Strange of Hunstanton, the family that built Hunstanton Hall in Smithdon Hundred, Norfolk, England. Lineal descendants of Roland le Strange have resided at Hunstanton Hall, somewhat continuously, from 1112 to 1998.

Amateur Strange historians have always viewed the Hunstanton lineage le Strange as the foremost of all the Strange lineages, forming the veritable root of all the Strange descendancies. Novices have long assumed that any family named Strange in North America must have been sometime linked to the family at Hunstanton, and that the persistent tracing of ancestors would eventually tie each Strange family to the trunk at Hunstanton.

Unfortunately, these dreams of distinguished descent have gradually evaporated, in the light of recent findings and reconstructions. As far as we may know or discern, the family le Strange of Hunstanton never gave rise to a Strange lineage in America. [return to top of page]

Roland le Strange’s sons named John, Hamo, and Guy distinguished themselves in Salop, as protectors of the March of Wales. The first Lordship Strange of Knockin, Salop, was conferred upon the second son, Hamo le Strange (circa 1120-1160), in 1157, and then passed to Hamo’s younger brother and heir, the third son Guy le Strange (circa 1122-1179). [return to top of page]

The constabulary of Knockin Castle was a critical military post, and therefore the Crown would not permit the tenancy of an heir female. When Guy le Strange died in 1179, the constabulary passed to Guy’s son and heir, Ralph le Strange of Alveley, 3rd Lord Strange. When Ralph died in 1195, the Lordship of Knockin fell into abeyance among Ralph’s three older sisters and coheirs Margaret, Joan, and Matilda.

Thus, the Lordship of Knockin originated in the cadet, namely the second son, Hamo, in 1157. It passed first to Hamo’s brother and heir, Guy, in 1160, and then passed to Guy’s only son and heir, Ralph le Strange of Alveley, in 1179. When the honor of Knockin Castle devolved into the abeyance among Ralph’s three older sisters and coheirs in 1195, the family made plans to transfer the castle from the females, into the hands of a military man.

The senior family le Strange offered to the sisters Margaret, Joan, and Matilda a gift of manors in exchange for Knockin Castle, and we believe that the castle passed directly into the hands of the sisters’ paternal first cousin, John le Strange II (circa 1148-1233). It appears as though John II took possession of Knockin in 1195, finalized the Indentures for the transfer of manors to his female cousins in 1197, and then was recognized by the Crown as 4th Lord Strange, Baron of Knokyn, in 1198.

The Barons of England were then discontented with their regional rights, and began to demand specific concessions of the Crown. The baronial disturbances and disorders lasted from 1189 to 1216, and when King John acceded to the throne in 1199, he deliberately neglected to confirm in writing the Barony of Knokyn.

Thus, we have a documentary hiatus between the years 1198 and 1216, when the Crown apparently classified Lord Strange as a member of de Montfort’s rebellious barons. When Henry III ascended to the throne in 1216, the royal Letters Patent were issued anew, and restored the status of the Barony Strange of Knokyn.

John II’s son and heir was John le Strange III (circa 1193-1269), 5th Lord Strange, who inherited Knokyn Castle in 1233. John III’s son and heir was John le Strange IV (circa 1231-1275), who succeeded as 6th Lord Strange of Knockyn, in 1269. [return to top of page]

Edward I was crowned in 1272, and he made permanent reforms, by transforming England’s feudal lordships into formal, parliamentary peerages. The Barons presented Edward I with a number of grievances entitled the Remonstrances (1297), and the Crown gradually began to respond to baronial demands. He determined to permit the Parliament to establish a new system of parliamentary control over the summoning of nobles, as peers of the realm.

Thus, the Parliament devised the practice of issuing Parliamentary Writs of Summons, which the Crown would routinely authorize. Prior to 1297, the Crown had always elevated lords to peerage in Parliament by means of Letters Patent, that the king himself issued at will. After 1297, the Parliament began to issue Litteræ per mandatum ‘letters by mandate’ for the recognition of lords of the Peerage of England.

John le Strange V (circa 1252-1309) succeeded as 7th Lord Strange by Letters Patent in 1275. The same John V was recognized as the 1st Lord Strange in the Peerage of England, when the Parliament issued to him a Writ of Summons in 1299.

John V’s eldest son and heir, John le Strange VI, became 2nd Lord Strange of Knockyn in 1309, and his eldest son and heir John le Strange VII became 3rd Lord Strange, Baron of Knockyn, in 1311.

John VII’s younger brother and heir was Sir Roger Lestrange I the Elder, who succeeded as 5th Lord Strange, Baron of Knockyn, in 1349. Sir Roger’s second son and heir was John Lestrange VIII, who became 6th Lord Strange, Baron of Knockyn in 1283.

John VIII’s eldest son and heir was Richard Strange [sic], who became 7th Lord Strange of Knokyn in 1398. Richard’s eldest son and heir was Sir John le Strange IX, who became 8th Lord Strange, Baron of Knokyn, in 1449.

When Sir John died in 1479, his daughter and sole heir, Johanna Stanley née le Strange (1463-1514), became 9th Baroness Strange of Knockyn in her own right, in 1479. Thus, the year 1479 marks the extinction of the Lords Strange of Knockyn. The Strange heirs male became extinct in 1479, and the Strange heirs general became extinct in 1514, when Johanna died.

John Drake Strange III claimed in 1972 that Edmund le Strange had been his direct ancestor, but without any good reason and without adequate proof. The family le Strange at Hunstanton left pedigrees showing that Edmund le Strange died without issue, so any progeny attributed to Edmund must be regarded as fictive.

Nevertheless, John Drake Strange III proposed that Edmund le Strange dropped the article le from his name, becoming simply Edmond Strange [sic], and established the Strange lineages in northern Devon and colonial Virginia. He specifically claimed that Edmond (1) moved to London, (2) married —— in London, and (3) had two sons named John Strange and George Strange who settled near Bideford and Northam, Devon.

Furthermore, John Drake Strange III identified Edmond’s supposititious son, John Strange, as having been the same person as John Straunge I (1558-1593) who died at Bideford, Devon, on 1593/9/19.

This extravagant theory has been circulating since 1972, but it does not seem to be true, and cannot be substantiated with any facts. This editor sees no reason whatsoever to connect John Straunge I (1558-1593) of Littleham by Bideford, Devon, on the west coast of England, with the family le Strange on the east coast of England. It seems highly doubtful and improbable that Edmund would drop the article le in the very age when the family was flourishing at Hunstanton. It also seems doubtful that he might have relocated to London, and that he sired there John Strange.

Let us summarize the line of Hunstonian descent proposed by John Drake Strange III in 1972, as it was recapitulated by Dorothy A. Walters in her privately published All About Us:

The dates italicized above are unique to John Drake Strange III’s work, and do not necessarily match the dates accepted in Extraneus.

This proposed line of descent has enjoyed considerable circulation, and has even been codified by certain inept publishers, such as Brøderbund Software, who simply reprint erroneous lineages for their customers, without ever checking or verifying the data. [return to top of page]

For the sake of comparison, let us compare this supposititious line of descent with the patrilinies we have documented in Norfolk and Devon. Here is the lineage of the family le Strange of Hunstanton Hall, Smithdon Hundred, Norfolk, but it shows no descendants of Edmund le Strange, because the family at Hunstanton reported that Edmund le Strange died without issue.

The descendants of Sir Thomas le Strange (1493-1545), Knight, of Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, were members of the landed gentry, and they were fully occupied with the management of more than 3,000 acres of pasture and farmland in northwestern Norfolk. The Household Accounts demonstrate to us that the family members were closely attached to one another, and maintained intimate connections with certain affines, such as Hastings, Calthorpe, and Spelman.

Sir Thomas had perhaps fifteen children, and he dressed more than one dozen men in liveries. He was the lord of the manor of Hunstanton, and therefore superintended an ancient cluster of manorial buildings and barns surrounded by a moat, and guarded by the battlemented Gatehouse (1492) that his father had erected in the year before his birth. Sir Thomas and his heirs also had living with the family at Hunstanton certain affines, such as the family of his brother-in-law, Sir Hugh Hastings.

The Accounts tell us that Sir Hugh Hastings paid Sir Thomas for his tenancy. We may therefore surmise that the two (2) parents lived with as many as fifteen (15) children, and more than one dozen (12) liveried servants, his brother-in-law’s family (5), and perhaps another dozen (12) lesser persons and servants who were closely attached to the household through affinity or employment. Thus, we know that the moated domus of the family le Strange and its various barns and outbuildings, beyond the moat, must have housed as many as forty-six (46) or more persons altogether.

The reader should examine the descendancy for traces of residency and adventure. Most of the family members remained at or near Hunstanton, continually staying in Norfolk. However, a few of the older sons and grandsons ventured to other places. Richard le Strange founded the Irish family L’Estrange of Moystown. Roger served Henry VIII at Calais, and later became a mercenary for Emperor Maximilian against the Turks. The military duties of Sir Nicholas le Strange II (1593-1591) took him to Ireland and Nottingham, but he nonetheless inherited Hunstanton and died there. Henry Spelman became a translator, and his brief career in Virginia left an indelible impression upon history, for he was the mediator between Virginia Colony and the Powhatan natives, and was once accused of meddling in state affairs by deliberately mistranslating certain statements.

This collected evidence yields a fairly consistent picture of family at Hunstanton. It was a landowning, manorial household that engaged mainly in agriculture and husbandry. They educated their children at colleges, such as Oxford and Cambridge, and sometimes hunted for game.

Some of the second sons or younger sons went abroad for military service or adventure in Virginia, but none of them had any associations with the sea. The Accounts tell us that the household often purchased quantities of fish, and that it sometimes dispatched men and goods to nearby Brancaster for transport to Scotland in military campaigns. Nevertheless, we have never found any records that specifically connect the family le Strange with seafaring or ship-owning.

In Victorian times, it became customary to speak of the Hunstanton heir as the Lord High Admiral of the Wash, because the family could rightfully claim whatsoever jetsam and flotsam happened to touch upon their shores. The family also enjoyed certain fishing rights in their region of the Wash.

However, the coastline at Hunstanton includes long stretches of tall cliffs, and the waters are remarkably shallow. When the tide is low, the waters completely recede from the shoreline, exposing many yards, and sometimes miles, of seabed. It was only natural that the shallow area along the shore would periodically trap whatever wreckage floated there, and it was natural too that mankind would want to forage through the materials. It was also natural for men to collect mollusks whenever the tide was low.

Given these circumstances, the reader should not be misled by the hereditary title of Lord High Admiral. The Admiral at Hunstanton commanded nothing more than some meager salvage operations, conducted mainly by residents using their feet. The Admiral could also claim commercial proceeds from any mollusks collected from the bottom of the Wash, but he simply had no reason to be otherwise concerned with maritime duties.

The nearest port of any practical use was the small inlet at Brancaster and Burnham Deepdale, but it lies some twelve kilometers to the east of Hunstanton. The only other port of any significance was the River Great Ouse at King’s Lynn, some twenty kilometers to the south. For these reasons geographical, the family at Hunstanton cannot have had any reasons to involve themselves in seafaring. The only vessels that could land at Hunstanton were smaller boats with shallow drafts, and even they could not approach the shore at low tide. [return to top of page]

Our evidence from Devon clearly fails to support the hypothesis of descent from Edmund le Strange of Hunstanton, because the lines in northern Devon happen to point instead to one Robarte Straunge as their progenitor. Robarte was roughly ten years older than Edmund. Furthermore, we have found no records suggesting Devonish descent from any progenitor named Edmund Strange, or Edmond Strange.

The pair of brothers George Strange I and John Straunge I of Littleham by Bideford would seem to match the brothers John Strange and George Strange mentioned by John Drake Strange III. However, John Drake Strange III postulated that they were the sons of his fictive Edmond Strange, whereas the historical records tell us that they were instead the sons of Robarte Straunge. [return to top of page]

The lineage that follows belongs to the same family that settled at Littleham by Bideford, but it constitutes a separate, collateral line of descent, through the eldest brother George Strange I.

We have no way to transcend the limits of extant parish records, and therefore cannot readily say from whence the Devon family Strange arose. However, a Devonshire historian stated, in 1792, that the Strange family of Littleham by Bideford and Northam, Devon, had ultimately come from Ireland, sometime prior to the year 1589. We simply have no records from Devon that show us any other alternative to Ireland.

The Strange descendancy in northern Devon bears no resemblance to the lineage at Hunstanton, Norfolk, and we have absolutely no evidence telling us that the Devon family ever had any contact or acquaintance with the family in Norfolk. [return to top of page]

The Hunstonian Hypothesis depends upon the presumptions that Edmund le Strange (post 1529-post 1547) had children, that he changed his surname from le Strange to Strange without the article le, that he migrated to London, and that Edmond’s supposed son John Strange founded the Devon lineages of Strange Littleham by Bideford and Strange of Northam.

The presumption that this younger son, Edmund le Strange, relocated from Norfolk to London, and that Edmund’s fictitious son, John Strange, founded the Strange family in Devon, seems to have been an improbable stretch of the imagination. The oldest known progenitor in northern Devon was Robarte Straunge, and we have no records of anyone named Edmond Strange existing in Devon, prior to the strings of persons named George Strange and John Strange. Furthermore, Edmund le Strange of Hunstanton has been noted in family pedigrees as having died without issue sometime after 1547, and the absence of his name in the Household Accounts suggests to us that he probably died young, unmarried, and childless.

The editor has searched the manuscripts of Extraneus for instances of the spellings Edmond Strange, Edmund Strange, Edmond le Strange, Edmund le Strange, Edmond Lestrange, and Edmund Lestrange. However, no records have been found to support the thesis that one Edmond Strange formed a link between the families in Norfolk and Devon.

The Mormons have codified the affiliation of John Strange to his supposed father, the childless Edmond le Strange [sic], but the Mormon record appears to have been entirely based upon a secondary source dated prior to February 1988. The International Genealogical Index (IGI) tells us that John Strange, son of Edmond le Strange, was born in London in 1547, but gives no parish name.

It is odd and inconsistent for an IGI record to be missing a parish name. The absence of a parish name should alert the researcher to the possibility that the record of interest might be an interpolation, based upon a secondary source.

The batch number of the IGI entry mentioning Edmond le Strange does not start with any letter (7920330.23), and therefore must refer to some secondary source, rather than a primary document. Given the spelling Edmond, instead of Edmund, and the milestone date of 1547, the editor has concluded that the Mormon record must have originated with John Drake Strange III’s work of 1972. Batch number 7920330.23 might refer instead to some Ordinance filing, and if so, the authority cited is probably John Drake Strange III, dated 1972.

As a consequence of this erroneous report dated 1972, we find today that a wide variety of genealogists continue to report the spurious lineage as something truthful, when it actually remains something invented, bogus, and demonstrably untrue.

Over time, this fictive report has been copied, and gradually amplified in importance. John Drake Strange III, the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and Brøderbund Software have all published the same record, redundantly and persistently, from 1972 until 1997. Thus, it is highly doubtful that the fictive lineage will be discredited and discarded anytime soon.

This situation might be described as a ‘circular reference.’ The idle ruminations of a young student in Oklahoma in 1972 have been accepted by the Mormons as the gospel truth about a suppositious event in London, England, purported to have occurred 1547. Copyists have widely distributed and published the same fictive record over the past quarter century, and now these recensions are being distributed anew by commercial companies such as Brøderbund.

Brøderbund’s Family Tree Maker sold one million copies in 1994, and the same company sells installments of its World Family Tree as secondary products. Contributors to the World Family Tree have often relied upon the same record, and therefore the information has been duplicated millions and millions of times over the past five years, 1994-1998.

It seems incredible and fairly astounding to find institutions such as these accepting the 1972 witness of an event in 1547, some 425 years after the supposed fact.

We do happen to know of one Edmund Strange (nata post 1585) who was born after 1585, but he was the son of John Straunge and Mary Pratt, and was born in Purleigh, Essex. We also know details of Edmund Strange’s family in Essex, and therefore know that this particular Edmund was unconnected to the family at Hunstanton, Norfolk.

We can find perhaps twenty-seven (27) references to Edmond Strange (8 records), Edmond le Strange (4), Edmond Lestrange (3), Edmund Strange (7), Edmund le Strange (3), and Edmund Lestrange (2). However, if we exclude all of the references to this particular controversy, we find that none of these individuals happen to match the criteria of the Hunstonian Hypothesis.

The example of Edmund Strange (nata post 1585) of Purleigh, Essex, happens to fall in the Tudor period, but it also happens to postdate Edmund le Strange (natus post 1529) of Hunstanton, or the supposed Edmond Strange (1527), by some fifty-eight to sixty (58-60) years.

The editor has thoroughly studied the published parish records Norfolk, Suffolk, London, Kent, Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, over fourteen years, 1985-1998, but has never encountered any authentic record substantiating these claims pertaining to one Edmund le Strange, or Edmond Strange. We cannot find any evidence of Edmond’s paternity of John Strange, and we cannot confirm the existence of any John Strange purportedly born in London in 1547. [return to top of page]

This editor has supposed that John Straunge I (1558-1593) of Littleham by Bideford was the son of Robarte Straunge of the same locality, and that neither of these individuals had any connection to the childless Edmund le Strange of Hunstanton. [return to top of page]

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Hypotheses of
Hunstonian Descent

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Arapacana Press

Mailing List | Guest Book | Contact | Links B.J. Way's Family Tree | Sitemap

Hypotheses of Hunstonian Descent

© 2007 Arapacana Press (Top of page)

Mailing List | Guest Book | Contact | Links
B.J. Way's Family Tree | Sitemap

Hypotheses of
Hunstonian Descent