The 21st Century Preston Family

Well, Christmas is over, the New Year has come and gone and we can begin trying to move on to more work in the website. Well, I say "we" but the truth is still that it is just poor old me, though there are rather more people who have become involved over the last few weeks and by the look of things may well be more to come. Our new members have all joined the Family Journal side of the site rather than anything else but let's face facts - the records are what really matter to pretty much every one of us! New members, though, have raised one or two issues that are relevant to our family in the 21st century and the way we can work together to help each other.

Applications and solutions

First off, there have been questions from one of our new members about the structure of the website and how it works to provide facilities we can all use. This takes us into the peculiar world of computerised solutions and applications and how they differ from each other - a matter of vanishingly small importance to most of us except in the way that it affects how we can use the website. To begin with, let's try a couple of simple definitions and work from there:-

An application is a set of tools that all work together as part of a single package that can be delivered to customers or users as one off-the-shelf package. Nice and easy - as long as you want everything in the application package and it has everything that you want to use.

A solution is a set of things that might be produced by different people for different uses that can still all be put together so that they deliver what you want to use. The snag with them is that they don't come in one neat bundle but instead have to be put together so that everything that is needed is collected into one place and all hooked up to the other bits of the solution.

Our website is not an application - it is a solution that is made up of several different websites that provide special services that are useful for our family site.

Truth and consequences

Two obvious questions - at least, they seem to be obvious because several people have asked them recently - that arise because of the structure of the site are:-

• What are the applications in our website?
• What does it mean for users?
  

Taking each in turn, let's take a look at the structure of the site, then what it means to us as users. After that we can have a quick look at the disadvantages of our site solution and finally wind up with the advantages that it offers. Most of the points have been covered before in one way or another but, since I have been asked about them, I am quite happy to go over them again.

Bits of the jigsaw

To begin with, there is the site itself - and this one is easy. I own and run a full internet domain (a place to store web pages and other things) which offers me the address "www.mpreston.demon.co.uk". Most of you will recognise this as a simple domain offered for free by my Internet Service Provider - Demon Internet - which I can use for my own pages. That is where the main pages sit and is used for hooking together the different sites used in our family pages solution.

Next up comes the Journal - the pages that you are reading - which is used just for keeping people in touch with developments and to inform everyone of what has been done, what is planned and what is currently under way. This is not provided by Demon Internet and is actually just the Blogger service provided by Google. Since it is not a part of the same company as the main page, it needs members to create an account (free, of course) in order to join in - though thankfully Blogger does allow us to add comments and join in discussions in the Journal even if we have not got accounts with Blogger.

So far, so good - we can use the website solution without actually needing to set up any accounts at all. Nice and easy to use, nice and easy to take a full part in and nice and easy to keep in touch with others using the site. There are even facilities to allow you to "follow" the blog posts so that you can be regularly updated on what happens in the site as a whole - though you can also follow the Journal without actually setting yourself up as a "follower".

Finally - so far - we have the Family Records and it is here that we have a different situation that does require you to join the site. This part of our solution, provided by Wikispaces, is a wiki - like the much better known Wikipedia site - so that we can all add, change and even remove entries in the records. When it comes right down to it, this is the main part of the site and the one where I expect to build up a very large number of pages - there are already more than 250 of them there - so that we can collect and keep up to date the full details of our family over the centuries.

Like most wiki sites, this does need members to join and set up an account before they are allowed to make any changes. In fact, the restrictions on the records are slightly more strict than the service provider insists on so that we can be a little more sure that people will not deface or corrupt our records - and that if they do they can be quickly removed from the site altogether!

Copyright and licensing

To be certain that all of our different components are allowed to work together and that any information on them is protected and legally safe, most of the parts are made up from open source software and are offered as open source products that can be linked together without breaking proprietary licence conditions. One issue that could cause a problem is the use of copyright on the content of the sites since they may be in different legal jurisdictions and be controlled under different versions of copyright law.

Thankfully, there are several open source copyright solutions out there and these have now been tested in a number of courts around the world, the most contentious of which is likely to be in the USA and even this has been tested and found to be fully enforceable. Links to details of how open source affects and is affected by copyright law in this paragraph point to a report on the testing of this matter in US courts for this very reason.

Of the various open source copyright - also known as "copyleft" - conditions that can be applied to information such as we record on the family site, I have chosen to put in place the Creative Commons licence to apply to the site. At the moment, this is only applied to the main site and to the wiki where we keep records of family members and even there we have not yet made it clear that it does apply by posting a link to the license on each page - but I shall do that as a matter of urgency, I promise!

Downsides and upsides

Obviously there is a major disadvantage to this sort of solution - you need an account on each part of it that requires an account and they can be different for each part. Wherever possible, users should do their damnedest to mitigate this problem by using the OpenID service (also a part of the site solution) so that a single logon can be used for all the different parts. Much less easy to deal with is the fact that each part of the site needs its own development of a standard "look and feel" - which still has to match as closely as possible the rest of the site.

On the bright side, that last disadvantage just means that poor old me gets more work - for you, as users, it should be pretty easy to find your way around and will even help you to recognise which part of the solution site you are using!

The major advantage, of course, is that if another feature is needed then it can be added without disrupting the rest of the site - and here, dear readers, we come to the crux of this posting. I have been asked by a number of site readers if it would be possible to add a forum - a place where we can post questions, answers, queries about the site, genealogy information not yet ready for the Family Records and so on. In fact, a place where we can generally keep in touch with each other.

As yet, I have not really begun to look for a way to add this to our site solution, but will be doing so over the next month or two (even though I have still got to change the main page for the site - so much work to do, so little time to do it!). I hope that this will be useful to users but there will inevitably be a downside to it - you will need to register an account with the forum provider as well as with the other parts of the site.

To make it easier to remember these passwords and account details, it is now clear that the best browser to use to view the site will be Mozilla Firefox and I shall also be adding this recommendation to the main site as well over the next few weeks. Other browsers will work, of course, but Firefox is well-known for its many ease-of-use features, a major one of which is its Password Manager to help you with exactly this sort of site.

Well, in the hope that this will answer the several questions I have had about the site structure and plans for the immediate future, I shall now ride off into the sunset and plan the next changes to be made. Perhaps by this time next month, we will have new features on the site... but more likely it will be April before they are in place.

Historical Perspectives

Before dealing with Adam Preston and his son Roger, lets look at the times. In the time of Adam's grandfather Phillip, King Henry III ruled England after the death of his father King John (Lackland). John had been forced to sign Magna Carta and young Henry, only nine years old when his father died, spent his entire reign trying to get rid of it! In 1244, though, he took a break from dealing with baronial power when the Scots threatened to invade England.

Family records show Roger Preston was born at this time and that his father was one of the "Border Barons" whose lands were sometimes considered English and sometimes Scottish. At the time, Scotland claimed land as far south as the river Ribble in mid-Lancashire. Worse, an uppity baron called Simon de Montford was wandering around England stirring up rebellion against the King!

If that were not enough, Henry was at war in Sicilly and not on the best of terms with the Pope in Rome! Such an unpopular chap was not long for the world, even if he was Plantagenet King of England - and in 1262 he finally got Papal permission to raise armies and stomp Simon de Montford.

Unfortunately, he lost. At the Battle of Lewes he was captured, becoming a puppet figurehead; a King in name only.

New times, new kings

Luckily for the monarchy, which Simon all but abolished, young Prince Edward escaped with the help of Simon de Montford's cousin Roger (not Roger Preston - don't get confused). Both Edward and Roger Preston were about the same age - around 25 - when Edward led an army against his father's captors.

And unlike his father, Edward won decisively!

Edward continued to rule, rather than handing power back to his father, until Henry died in 1272, at which time he became the true monarch King Edward I (also known as Longshanks and "Hammer of the Scots").

What about the family?

At the start of this tale we have Phillip Preston, claiming lands in the North West of England... which happen to be claimed by the Kings of Scotland.

His protector, King Henry III is involved in diplomatic rows with the Pope, a war in Sicilly, a rebellion by Simon de Montford and a threatened full-scale invasion by the Scots! Even if he could have come to Phillip's aid, Henry was a poor military man and didn't have the support of his own barons.

He settled for telling the Earl of Lancaster that it was his job to keep the Scots away. So Phillip spent his life fighting against the Scottish virtually without aid.

Phillip did manage to father a son, Roger, though quite late in life. No doubt King Henry was grateful to the Border Barons for keeping the Scottish threat at bay, but I can't help feel he would have been especially pleased to have one of his Border Barons getting a son while Henry was celebrating the birth of his own son, Edward Longshanks.

Young Roger Preston was stuck with the same problems as his father, while Henry tried to raise armies, fortify York, keep the Scots from invading and put down the rebellion of Simon de Montford. It seems very unlikely Roger would have been able to avoid getting involved - it is what Border Barons were there for - so, like his father, young Roger would end up fighting for his King.

And so to Adam Preston

Like his father before him, late in life, Roger managed to father a son - our friend Adam Preston, who this discussion is about. After three generations of fighting the Scottish on behalf of both Henry III and, after 1276, his son King Edward I (Edward Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots) the family had spent an lot of money. Perhaps this helps explain the undoubtedly corrupt court ruling that helped Adam effectively steal the dowry of Margaret de Stainton's son John. Any grateful King would want the fortunes of so useful a House restored - otherwise they might not be able to fight those damned Scotsmen!

You see, Edward had - in the very same year - managed to get himself recognised as King of Scotland, and had placed John Bailliol on the throne as his administrator. It was supposed to be a "temporary arrangement" but Edward made it clear he regarded it as permanent and would do everything in his power to make sure he remained King of England and Scotland.

To help those not familiar with the history of the British Isles there's a simple way to imagine the situation. Many will have seen the not-very-good film "Braveheart" starring Mel Gibson - which happens to be unusually accurate for Gibson's historical films, tending as they do to have a lot more to do with how he wishes it had happened rather than what actually did happen. Well, all of this fun with Adam is happening at the start of the film - that is the historical context.

What happened next

Just after the end of the film, or at least the end of Mel Gibson (sorry - of William Wallace), old Edward Longshanks died, leaving his fourth son by Queen Eleanor to become the new King Edward II.

The new King didn't seem to care as much as his Dad about keeping the Scots away and for the next few years he let Robert the Bruce reconquer most of Scotland - though not the House Preston lands in Westmorland and Lancashire. The young King was too busy having a war of his own - against the very same barons his father had relied on to keep the Scots in check. It came about because soon after becoming King, he had left for France and put a baron named Galveston in charge of the country - who the Earl of Lancaster and his allies promptly deposed and executed.

Young Edward came charging back to England and set off to war against the barons, encouraged by Aymer de Valence, 2nd Earl of Pembroke acting as royal advisor. The barons didn't care any more - Galveston was dead and that was what they wanted. Before a war could get properly under way, the barons gave in, asked the King's Pardon - and carried on as before.

Our own House was a vassal of the Earl of Lancaster. Rather than loyal as we had been to the King's father and grandfather, our House was one of the rebels. It got complicated now - often referred to as the "Rule of the Despensers", but we won't go into why - and many barons moved over from rebel to the King's side and even betrayed the Earl of Lancaster and had him beheaded in Edward's own Court.

Funnily enough, its at just this time Adam Preston's son Roger is made Justice of the King's Bench, which suggests Roger had curried favour with the King by helping to betray his own lord, the Earl of Lancaster.

Queen Isabella, the King's wife, was still in France, gathering an army under the command of Roger Mortimer. In September of the same year, 1326, they invaded England with a small army - but many nobles, including "Henry, Earl of Lancaster and his vassals" (British National Archives), betrayed the King and marched to join the invading army, stealing whatever royal treasure they could grab on the way.

Back to loyalty

Perhaps our House betrayed their Earl - it seems likely - but it is clear they betrayed King Edward II, though after his alleged murder (this is the infamous "hot irons up the bum" story of royal murder) they moved wholeheartedly to support the young Prince Edward in return for a promise to go to war against Scotland.

Just to show that honesty has its own rewards, the very year the young prince became King Edward III, he promoted Roger Preston to the highest independent court as a Justice of Common Pleas.

This is the story of Adam Preston and his family during a turbulent and vivid period of English (and Scottish) history. Stories like this - real people and their motives - are what family history is all about.

Genealogy Records

Thanks to the need for more details in the records section, I found myself needing to collect a set of genealogy for part of the family - I chose the Viscounts Gormanston and Barons Drumhaire - to use as an example for adding records. Like most in House Preston, that means dredging through centuries of history to find details, even though I desperately want them to be incomplete.

I don't intend to deal with work in the past fortnight to collect it: not yet. If it turns out people would like to know how I collected it I can, but only if people post questions to the Journal so I know what they are interested in. After all, I 've been collecting over eight hundred years worth of data! Instead, I'll look at what I found and how I recorded it - and apologise for forgetting to post the second September entry because I got too involved in research.

Finding historical records

Before I show off by saying how well I did finding old records, I'll be honest and admit a lot came from The Honorable Jenico Francis Tara Preston, 18th Viscount Gormanston and family during my last visit. I ought to have got back in touch to check and perhaps add more information, but its now some 20 years since we last met, at the Dublin Millenium Celebrations in 1988, and its more than possible he has died since. Should he still be kicking around, I'd be delighted if he got in touch - perhaps through the Journal - but won't pester a busy family with my attentions... even though I remember those wonderful dogs so well and would love to know if the family still keep wolfhounds.

That said, I did track down the earliest information myself and that's what I want to look at; not least because I'm still collecting and getting ready to store details on the Family Records. I really want to look at just the information for Roger Preston born sometime after 1290 AD and who died some time before 1377 AD, but it will be useful to mention Adam Preston, who died some time after 1290 AD.

The information about Adam comes from Court records of King Edward I. Before finding it, all we knew was his son was called Roger, as was his father. The sources provide a means to discover information not included in them - but implied - that may be useful to researchers into our rich and varied family history.

Adam Preston

His father, Roger Preston, doesn't have a recorded date of birth or death I've been able to find. Similarly, Adam doesn't have dates recorded. However, a stroke of luck turned up a manuscript from the British Library while compiling the records that can provide more detail than it actually gave.

In the year 1290, Adam Preston appeared before the Court of King's Pleas to seek release from betrothal to Margaret de Stainton, which was granted. There's little more in the manuscript, but it provides useful details.

First, Margaret was the widow of John de Stainton and as a widow, would have had to spend a year of mourning before the betrothal. It's unlikely that release would have been sought in the first year and, in addition, the court dealt with the care and wardship of Margaret's children by John - of which there were five. Now, it would be rare for a girl of 14 to marry and bear children but by age 16 is possible. It's unlikely a girl of means and position to have appeared before this Court, would remain unmarried at age 18 so we can presume she married John at roughly 16.

Similarly, we know biologically it is rare for a woman to have one child each year, though possible for there to be one every 18 months. While it would be rare for all children to have survived birth, we can't assume they didn't, so have the reasonable estimate she was married to John for about 8 years, making her age 24 by the time of John's death and 25 before a betrothal would be reasonable. Allowing a year of betrothal to pass before the case came to court, and under the assumption a man of means would not be engaged to a woman of means and station if she was much younger than him, we can say Adam Preston must have been 26 or older by 1290, making his date of birth some time around 1260 to 1265.

At some time after the case, Adam did have a child - his first and his heir - who he named Roger, after his father. It would be unusual for a man of position to immediately marry after a case such as this and most likely that there was a further betrothal for a year before marriage. Since we know it is rare- though not impossible - to survive beyond age 50 and have his first children, we can presume he was not older than 48 at the trial.

From this brief reference, we can say Adam Preston must have been born between 1242 and 1265, but more likely at the later end. We know his father was Roger Preston and grandfather Phillip Preston, who was born around 1220. Thanks to simple biology, we know that Roger must have been born no earlier than 1235 to 1240 and even that means Adam can't have been born until 1250 to 1260 - which fits perfectly with the information we have from the Court.

This means an initial guess at the genealogy which presumed an unknown generation before Roger is wrong, and he must have been the son of Phillip rather than grandson - there simply isn't time for the extra generation! From a tiny item, we can pin down the details of this early part of the family!

There are even two final brief parts of the records which cast further light on matters at the time - Adam was awarded "rights of wardship and marriage" for John de Stainton, meaning he had to look after him, so he must have been young in 1290, and Adam would collect the dowry for his marriage. We also know Margaret eventually provided land and rents for young John, rather than the normal case of this being provided from the dowry, so we can be sure Adam kept it. The family must have been relatively impoverished - or very mean - at the time.

Further details

With all this, I've not managed to get to Adam's son Roger, which is what I wanted, so I'll leave him for later and post another page. I'd like to deal with it here, but he was involved in too much politics - and the fact he was involved with King Edward III means the machinations of his father and sneaky keeping of the dowry for John de Stainton's wife made the family more wealthy and powerful by the time young Roger came along.

As a last note for anyone who still thinks this case was honest and completely above board, it is worth noting that the court was recorded and headed by someone whose name is given as Simon de Preston Atha. So if you don't smell a rat by now, there must be soemthing wrong with your nose!