from "The Ancestry of Charles II, King of England:A Medieval Heritage"
by Neil D Thompson and Charles M Hansen

Those with interests in medieval genealogy will be aware of the long-running series (1981-2012) by Neil Thompson and Charles Hansen entitled "A Medieval Heritage: The Ancestry of Charles II, King of England" in the American journal The Genealogist. As the authors stated in their introduction it provides a sweeping cross-section of the major royal and noble families of medieval Europe. Furthermore anyone who can establish a descent from any English or Scottish king prior to 1688 will have direct access to the best of current knowledge on their most ancient ancestors.

In 2012, on completion of the full 12 generation series, it was republished in hard back book form by the American Society of Genealogists. A copy is available in the FMG library.

By kind permission of the authors, the FMG has produced a graphical summary of this ambitious project, providing an easy visual understanding of the relationships. It is important to emphasise that these charts provide only a skeleton. It is essential to refer to the original work for a full account with comprehensive bibliographic citations. Table 1 shows generations 1-5. Tables 2-17 cover generations 5-10. Click the "Generations 9-12" tab to see the list of tables for these generations. The arrows at either side of the charts provide links to the next generations in each direction. A '+' sign on generation 12 indicates that the original work includes information about further ancestral generations. We are currently working to complete the entries for generations 11 and 12.

The entries for generations 1-10 include a reference to the volume and page numbers of The Genealogist in which the original material appeared, covering vols. 2-19 of the journal. This information is not provided for recent entries in generations 11 and 12 as it is now preferable to use the book version, for which the ancestor number is sufficient reference.

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