CAS family history
Posted by:
Bob Mann (IP Logged)
Date: 10 June, 2003 06:32PM
I hope I am not considered presumptuous in suddenly sending so much, but this is typical of me; I'm the one who sits there quietly for a few weeks or months, listening, and then suddenly becomes voluble.
Reading through Donald Sydney-Fryer's biographical sketch I was fascinated to see that CAS's maternal ancestors spent time in Devon, which is where I am. According to him the Gaylords have a published genealogy, which presumably says where in Devon (and Somerset) they were. My first assumption is Exeter, the major city for SW England, where a lot of Huguenot families settled, including the ancestors of Thomas D'Urfey, the playwright and publisher. Through my contacts at the Devon Records Office I could try to find out more about the family, if this is of interest and hasn't already been done. I'm currently putting together a book on Devon's literary associations, and it will be great to get CAS into it, if only indirectly, as a person whose ancestry spent time in England's loveliest county (there's also meant to be a connection with James Branch Cabell, but this is becoming more dubious on examination).
I must admit to being a bit worried about the confident statement (repeated uncritically in Stephen Jones's piece in the Emperor of Dreams collection) that one of CAS's paternal ancestors was beheaded for his involvement in the Gunpowder Plot. As far as I am aware, no one was beheaded for implication in the Gunpowder Plot. The punishment for treason was to be hanged, drawn and quartered (I could give a graphic description, but am sure that such erudite readers as are in the Eldritch Dark will not need me to). For royalty, or the higher echelons of the nobility, the sentence was usually commuted to beheading, but a baronet in Lancashire wouldn't have counted as either. The fact is that no history of the Plot that I have read mentions anyone called Ashton. This is not to say that the family weren't sympathetic to the plotters, and did not suffer for their catholicism (Lancashire was a hotbed of it). But they weren't major players, and unless someone has more specific information, I would suggest that this is a bit of family myth-making rather than historical fact.
Best wishes
Bob