One Family’s Journey Through Ten Centuries: A social history of the second millennium – Book One

By: William Lilly

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Synopsis: We trace one family, generation by generation, throughout the one thousand years of the second millennium. The trilogy sets the family within its social environment, describing its migration from the continent, and across England, Scotland, and Ireland to settle in the New World. From that we get a vivid picture of what affected, motivated, worried, and encouraged this Saxon family and how they coped. Since the migration of this family was typical for the time, this study is relevant to millions of people in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, whose ancestors followed the same general migratory path. Book I specifically covers the feudal period in the Middle Ages (1000 – 1560), where a feudal autocrat and an avaricious pope, between them, owned and controlled everything. Throughout, the family became our witnesses to many of the historic events of the feudal period: the Battle of Hastings, Anglo-Saxon resistance, the plague, the Little Ice Age, the Great Starvation, Guilds, the building of great cathedrals and castles, and the gradual decline in the king’s power and control. In 1067 William the Conqueror appointed Honfroi de Insula de L’lle as the Dominus of the area around the feudal village of Combe, Wiltshire. He permitted Honfroi to live and build a motte and bailey castle there to assist in keeping the peace. The front image is Castle Combe as it appears today.