Royal Links!
My 31xGreat Grandfather was one Rognvald I “The Wise” Eysteinsson, who was born in Norway in about 834 and died in the Orkey Islands of Scotland in about the year 890. Rognald was also the 4xGreat Grandfather of William ‘The Conqueror’, King of England. William is not my direct ancestor (he is my 27xGreat Uncle!), however we do share an ancestor in William’s mother, Herleve de Falaise (1003-1050) who was mistress to Robert I, Duke of Normandy. Herleve later married Herluin de Conteville (1001-1066) and their daughter, Emma, married Richard I, Viscount of Avranches. Richard’s son, Albreda, fought alongside King William at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, after which he was given land around Okehampton in Devon. Over the next few decades the family moved to Kent, in particular a hamlet outside Folkestone called Hougham. Richard I’s great grandson, Robert, took the Hougham name as his surname, becoming Robert de Hougham (1160-1230). It was Robert’s 15xGreat Grand daughter, Alice Hougham (1758-1798) who married into what would become my mother’s family.
James Lightfoot – the man who married his dead wife’s sister…
James Lightfoot was born in Deptford in London in about 1841 and married his first cousin, Elizabeth Alefounder in 1866. She died in 1870 and by the 1871 Census James was living with Elizabeth’s sister, Susannah Wesley Alefounder and later that year they were “married”.
Under the 1835 Marriages Act this would have been illegal and by the period in question was a contentious issue. There are many references in The Times newspaper from 1849 onwards to attempts to change the law in this respect, all of which were defeated until the Deceased’s Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act was passed in 1907. It is very unlikely that James and Susanna would have been unaware of what they were doing!
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