If You Have These 10 Surnames, You Descend From the Knights Who Took England

[00:00:00]On the 14th of October 1066, a few thousand men on horseback changed the course of English history in a single afternoon. They crossed the sea from Normandy behind William the Conqueror, met the army of the last Anglo-Saxon king, Harold Godwinson, on a hill near Hastings, and fought from morning until dusk in one of the bloodiest single days the island had ever seen. By nightfall, the king lay dead. The old England was finished, and a new one had begun.

[00:00:32]And here is the thing almost nobody realizes. We know some of their names, not the whole army. Most of those men are lost forever, but a small number of William's closest companions are named in the earliest records, listed among the men who fought at his side and were rewarded with the conquered land itself.

[00:00:53]Their holdings were written into the great survey of England that William ordered 20 years later, the Domesday Book, a record so complete and so precise it still exists today, and you can still look up the villages these men were given. A handful of those names are being carried by families walking around right now, perhaps by you. Today, we are counting down 10 surnames that trace back to the documented companions of William the Conqueror, the knights who actually took England. Let me be honest with you first, because this subject is drowning in false claims. Surnames did not exist yet in 1066.

[00:01:33]They came afterward, so no surname on its own proves you descend from these men. But these are real, named, recorded knights. Their names became real and traceable family lines, and there is a twist at the very end that makes the odds far better than you would ever dare to guess. Before we start, tell us in the comments what part of the world you are watching from, and subscribe. Count how many you recognize.

[00:02:01]Number 10, Marmion. It sounds like something out of an old poem, and it is, but the family was entirely real.

[00:02:09]Robert de Marmion came out of Normandy in the wake of the conquest, and was granted the great castle and lands of Tamworth in the English Midlands.

[00:02:19]And the Marmions held one of the strangest and proudest hereditary duties in the whole kingdom.

[00:02:25]They were the king's champions. At each coronation, a Marmion knight in full armor would ride his horse straight into the coronation banquet, throw down his gauntlet before the assembled lords, and challenge to mortal combat any man who dared deny the new king's right to the throne.

[00:02:44]Generation after generation, that was their family's role. If your name is Marmion, your ancestors were the men who threw down the gauntlet for the crown of England itself.

[00:02:56]Number nine, Ferrers. From the Norman town of Ferrières, and the name has iron worked right into it, from the French word for a farrier, a shaper of horseshoes and iron. Henry de Ferrers was one of William's most trusted men, granted well over a hundred manors scattered across England, and then chosen as one of the royal commissioners who actually wrote out and compiled the Domesday Book. His descendants became Earls of Derby, and one of the great baronial houses of medieval England. So, if your name is Ferrers, or Farrar, or Ferrar, your ancestor did not merely fight in the conquest, he helped write the very record that proves the rest of this list. His own hand is in the book.

[00:03:42]Number eight, Grantham, or Grantmesnil in the older Norman form the name began as. Hugh de Grantmesnil was one of the most important of all the Conqueror's companions. a A seasoned commander who had fought for William for years before Hastings and who held high command on the battlefield that day. He was rewarded with enormous estates and became one of the most powerful magnates in the newly conquered kingdom and even served as a governor of the realm. Over the centuries that mouthful of a Norman name, Grantmesnil, wore steadily down in English mouths into simpler shapes. If your name carries that root, your ancestor was a battlefield commander at the very making of England. Number seven, Mandeville from Manneville in Normandy and it is a name that rose fast and climbed high. Geoffrey de Mandeville was granted great estates across 11 counties after the conquest and his descendants became Earls of Essex and built one of the mightiest stone fortresses in the land. The name became a byword for Norman power and ruthless ambition for better and for worse. A later Geoffrey de Mandeville would defy his king so brazenly that he was stripped of everything, turned outlaw and died excommunicated with a crossbow bolt in his head. His body left unburied for years. That was the ferocity bred into these families. If your name is Mandeville, your family climbed from a single Norman village to the very summit of English nobility on the strength of what happened on one afternoon in 1066.

[00:05:24]Number six, Tosny or Tony, one of the oldest and proudest Norman houses of them all. The Tosny family were the hereditary standard bearers of Normandy and Ralph de Tosny fought at Hastings and was rewarded afterward with lands scattered across the west of England. To carry the standard was among the greatest honors a Norman knight could hold. The man trusted to bear the very banner of his lord into the heart of the battle, where the fighting was always fiercest. If your name descends from Tosny, your ancestors carried the flag of Normandy into the fight that took a kingdom.

[00:06:04]Before I show you the last five, if you carry one of these names, or any old Norman name at all, and you have ever wondered how your family fits into the story of the conquest, I put it all together in a guide called The Bloodline Archive >> [music] >> over at dnaorigin.org.

[00:06:22]The link is in the description. But stay right here, because the last name on this list belonged to the man who may have killed a king of England.

[00:06:31]Number five, Beaumont. From the Norman words for beautiful hill, and it belonged to one of the most powerful families the conquest ever produced.

[00:06:41]Robert de Beaumont fought at Hastings as a young man, and the chroniclers singled him out by name for his courage, recording that he led a charge on the right wing of William's army and fought brilliantly. He was showered with lands on both sides of the channel, and his family went on to become Earls of Leicester and Warwick, absolute titans of the medieval age. If your name is Beaumont, or the worn down English form Beaumont, your ancestor was one of the few men whose bravery on the day England fell was written down at the time.

[00:07:16]Number four, Lacy or de Lacy, from Lassy in Normandy. Two brothers of this house, Ilbert and Walter de Lacy, came with the conquest and were rewarded on a staggering scale. Ilbert was granted a vast territory in Yorkshire known as the Honor of Pontefract, where he raised a great castle, [music] while Walter took lands on the wild Welsh border and became a marcher lord, one of the half kings the crown placed on its frontiers to hold them by force.

[00:07:49]The Lacys appear all through the Domesday Book as tenants in chief, holding land directly from the king.

[00:07:55]>> [music] >> If your name is Lacy or Lacey, your ancestor was handed an entire corner of England to rule.

[00:08:02]Number three, Giffard. From a Norman nickname that meant, of all things, chubby-cheeked. [music] But there was nothing soft about this family. Walter Giffard was one of William's principal companions, named in the earliest sources among the men present at Hastings, >> [music] >> and he was rewarded with vast estates, and later raised to Earl of Buckingham.

[00:08:24]He, too, was trusted as one of the commissioners of the Domesday Survey.

[00:08:29]If your name is Giffard or Gifford, your ancestor stood inside the innermost circle of the men who first conquered England, and then sat down and cataloged every hide of it.

[00:08:40]Number two, Malet. From an old Norman name, and William Malet holds a place in this story that almost no one else can match. He fought at Hastings, and the chronicles record that when the battle was over, it was Malet [music] who was entrusted with the body of the defeated King Harold, the fallen Anglo-Saxon king.

[00:09:02]Malet was himself of mixed Norman and English blood, and many believe that is exactly why the grim, delicate honor of dealing with Harold's body fell to him, a man who belonged to both worlds.

[00:09:16]>> [music] >> He went on to hold great power in the conquered and rebellious north of England, where he helped hold the newly won land against constant revolt. If your name is Malet or Mallett, your ancestor was the man William trusted to deal with the body of the last English king, at the very hinge of history, where one age ended and another began.

[00:09:39]And here is number one, Tyrell or Tyrrell, as it is more often spelled today. Walter Tyrrell was a Norman lord bound tightly to the Conqueror's own family, >> [music] >> and his name is fixed forever to one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in all of English history.

[00:09:56]>> [music] >> In the year 1100, William the Conqueror's son, King William II, known as William Rufus, was killed by an arrow while out hunting in the New Forest. And the man whose arrow is said to have struck him down, whether by a horrible accident or by cold design, was Walter Tyrrell. He did not stay to explain himself. He fled the country that very day and never truly returned.

[00:10:23]And the throne passed with suspicious speed to the dead king's waiting brother. To this day, no one knows for certain whether it was a hunting accident or a royal assassination. If your name is Tyrrell, your family name is tied forever to the death of a king of England and to a mystery that has never once been solved in 900 years.

[00:10:44]So, how many did you count? And now the twist I promised you.

[00:10:49]>> [music] >> The part that makes the title of this video far truer than it has any right to be. You might assume that descent from a handful of Norman knights would be vanishingly rare, the private preserve of a few dukes and earls. It is the exact opposite. These men came in 1066.

[00:11:07]That is nearly a thousand years ago, something close to 30 generations back.

[00:11:12]And every single generation you go back, your number of ancestors doubles. Two parents, four grandparents, eight, 16.

[00:11:21]And by the time you reach the age of the Conqueror, the number of ancestral places in your family tree has run into the millions, far more slots than there were people alive in all of England. The mathematics is merciless. It means the same individuals must fill those slots over and over, and it means the descendants of the conqueror's companions never stayed penned inside the nobility. Through daughters who married down, through younger sons with no title, through a thousand ordinary and forgotten marriages, that blood spread outward across the centuries until it soaked deep into the general population. Genealogists are now confident that virtually everyone with substantial English ancestry descends from the Norman knights of 1066, many times over, whether they carry one of these names or not. The surname is only the visible thread. It is the one place where the story broke the surface and got written down.

[00:12:20]If your name is on this list, you carry the name of a conqueror openly. And if it is not, the blood of the men who took England is almost certainly running in you regardless. If you found this fascinating, subscribe and tell us in the comments, is your name on the list?

[00:12:37]And where in the world did your family finally end up? A few thousand men crossed a narrow sea and took an entire kingdom. 900 years later, their blood is still walking the earth in all of us.