There are a number of families who, although they do not hold a peerage or a baronetage themselves, provide very important genealogical links between peerage and baronetage families. They often provide the link to a royal descent or a famous connection.

Campbell of Shawfield, Islay and Skipness

This branch of the great Campbell Clan is significant for various marriage alliances it might in a comparatively short period of time between 1726, when Daniel Campbell bought the Isle of Islay, and 1853, when his great-great-grandson had to sell the island due to financial difficulties . The most important of these marriages was that of Col John Campbell MP, 4th of Islay, with his distant cousin Lady Charlotte Campbell, second daughter of the 5th Duke of Argyll.

Gascoigne, of Gawthorpe, co. York

The Gascoignes were for a time a prominent family in West Yorkshire. Gawthorpe Hall was very near the site of the present-day Harewood House, the home of the Earls of Harewood. Three generations of the Gascoignes married into the Neville and Percy families, the two leading families in the North of England, thereby providing their descendants, not least Catherine Middleton, with a number of descents from King Edward III and the earlier Plantagenet and Norman kings. Some of the Gascoigne descendants settled in New England, and were the ancestors of many prominent Americans, including General George Washington, the First President of the United States.

Spencer (pre 1603)

The first Spencer to own Althorp, still the seat of the Earls Spencer, was Sir John Spencer, the archetypal self-made man of the Tudor period. The genealogy of the Spencer family prior to 1603, when Sir Robert Spencer was ennobled as the 1st Baron Spencer, is interesting on two counts: firstly, it shows two more connections with General George Washington, the First President of the United States, who descended from the Washington family of Sulgrave Manor, co. Northampton, which is situated only a short distance from Althorp, and secondly it gives a good example of the venality of the Tudor-period heralds "in providing a family, when it had acquired wealth, with arms to which it is not entitled, on the strength of a pedigree concocted for the purpose".

Last updated 16 Apr 2012

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