Subj:  Margaret Courtney-Boyd
Date: 7/31/01 5:43:35 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: [email protected] (Baker, Andrew J (CRS))
To: [email protected] ('[email protected]')

I wrote a few weeks ago about my wife's connection with the Courtney Boyds.
I've solved the mystery, and I've alsio found aletter from Evelyn may
Courtney Boyd to my father in law in 1960.

It seems (I need to get the officiual certificates to prove it) that Henry
Courtney Courtney was first married to Eleanor Winthrop. Her father was Rev
Benjamin Winthrop, Rector of Wolverton, Warwick. Eleanor (I guess as the
records are not on the familySearch database) was the mother of Margaret
Courtney-Boyd.

Henry Courtney was the Rector of Wolverton after B Winthrop, and therefore
married his predecssor's youngest daughter. As in this case the previous
rector (or his family) were responsible for appointing the rectors after
them (owning the advowson, the responsibility for the rectory) the families
were probably friends before this.

My wife is descended from Bejamin Winthrop's oldest daughter.

So, Margaret Courtney Boyd was my wife's grandfather's cousin, aunt to my
father in law.

The extraordinary twist to this bit of research is that Rev Benjamin
Winthrop was the most senior living descendent of King Edward 1st and
blanche of Castile according to the 1850s Burke's Royal families book. This
traces the mostdirect descwendant of every monarch, treating men and women
equally. My father in law wou;ld have been also the most direct living
descendant of Edward 1st. It's a pointless and amusing thought that if
Edward 1st (ironically the "Hammer of the Scots") had changed the law so
that women had equal rights of succession my sister in law would now be
Queen of England! This is absolutely true but probably fairly pointless!

Anyway, Margaret Courtney Boyd would also have been, therefore, a descendant
of Edward 1st!

I still don't know who Henry Courtney's second wife was.

Great fun this genealogy!

 Baker, Andrew J   [email protected]