Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 19

The British Royal family has its fair share of Irish blood. Henry II’s maternal grandmother was the daughter of Malcolm III of Scotland, descended from Fergus Mor Mac Erc, the Irish prince who founded the Scottish monarchy (see p. 41). All subsequent English monarchs have had Irish blood, with an important extra dose when Fergus’s heirs, the Stuart kings of Scotland, became kings of England as well in 1603. In the 19th century, John O’Hart hoped that by publishing a family tree showing this in his Irish Pedigrees he would ‘conduce a kindly feeling on behalf of Her Gracious Majesty towards ourself and our bleeding country.’ In addition, the late Queen Mother’s maternal great-grandmother Anne Wellesley was the niece of the Irish-born Duke of Wellington and a 4 x great-granddaughter of Mary O’Brien, a 19 x great-granddaughter of the Irish king Brian Boru (d. 1014), through the Barons of Inchiquin and the Kings of Thomond. Prince William’s mother, the late Princess Diana, meanwhile, was daughter of Frances Burke-Roche, descended from the Barons Fermoy, a family with extensive Anglo-Irish ancestry.