Volume 18 , Issue 12

NW Okie's Journey

Genealogy is a fascination for this NW Okie in many ways while searching for family surnames and the history behind them. What has always stirred my curiosity, where exactly did the WARWICK surname come from and is the Earl of Warwick have anything to do with the surnames of some WARWICK ancestors? I don't know the answer to the latter, but I include the history of Warwick's Castle and the Earl of Warwick in this week's edition.

Warwick Surname
Recorded as Warwick, Warick, Warrick and others, this is an English surname. It is locational but from any or all of the places called Warwick. These include the county of Warwickshire, or the county town of Warwick, or a small village in Cumberland. In all cases the origination of the place name is from the sh pre 7th Century word "wering", meaning a weir, with "wic", a dairy farm. The county is first recorded as Waerincwicscir in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles of 1016, but the county town is even earlier being recorded in the Saxon Chartulary of 737 a.d. as "Waerincgwican". It was not until the recording as Warwic appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 that we have a spelling that in any way resembles the modern form. The derivation of the place in Cumberland is slightly different being from the word "waroth" meaning a shore, and "wic", a dairy farm. The earliest recording of this place name is in the register of the Priory of Wetherhal of 1132, as "Warthwic". Early recordings include Richard Warwick who married Hester Thruxton at St. Mary's Aldermary, in the city of London in 1601. The first recorded spelling of the family name is shown to be that of Turchil de Waruuic, He was the Sheriff of Warwickshire, and dated 1086, in the Domesday Book of Warwickshire, during the reign of King William 1st, known as "The Conqueror", 1066 - 1087. Surnames became necessary when governments introduced personal taxation. In England this was sometimes known as Poll Tax. Throughout the centuries, surnames in every country have continued to "develop" often leading to astonishing variants of the original spelling.

The Courts of Europe
In The Times Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia, dated 21 January 1909, Thursday, page 6, we came across this article entitled, "The Courts of Europe," by La Marquise de Fontenoy. Having to do with the eArl of Warwick claims descent from the King-maker.

Lord Warwick's boast on the subject of his lineage in the interview which he granted to Mrs. George Augustus Sala, and which, printed in a number of American papers, commences, "Yes, I am descended from the King-maker, Earl of Warwick," will be news to most students of history and genealogy, for there are no ties of blood between the house of Greville, of which the present Lord Warwick is the chief, and the King-maker is the chief, and the King-maker portrayed by Bulwer Lyton as "the last of the barons" in the novel of that name, and the only association between them is that of title and of the ownership of Warwick Castle.

The King-maker had no son, but two daughters, one of whom, Lady Anne Neville, after marrying Edward, Prince of Wales, the murdered son of Henry VI, became the consort of Richard III, of England. The other daughter, Lady Isabel, married the Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. By this marriage there were two children, a son and a daughter. The son inherited through his mother his grandfather's earldom of Warwick, and died without issue, a parliamentary attainder of his earldom of Warwick following his death, and being, therefore, of a posthumous character. The daughter, Margaret, Countess of Salisbury, who was beheaded in the Tower, had a daughter and four sons, one of whom was Cardinal Pole, Archbishop of Canterbury. AS the eldest brother of Cardinal Pole left a number of daughters, it might have been possible that, through some matrimonial alliance of their descendants with the house of Greville, the present Earl of Warwick could have boasted of descent, ever so indirect, of the King-maker. But, had the present Earl of Warwick, or any of the other four Earls of Warwick of the house of Greville, been able to discover a descent of this kind, we should undoubtedly have heard of it long ere this, and they would have taken the customary steps to secure a repeal of the attainder, all the more as the King-maker earldom of Warwick was a peerage descendable through the female as well as the male side of the house.

Unfortunately for Lord Warwick, his own wife has in her book, entitled "Warwick Castle and its Earls," demonstrated the fallacy of his pretensions to be a descendant of the "King-maker," for the volume in question shows, among other things, how it is that her husband had no connection whatsoever, directly or indirectly, with the peer known as "the last of the barons." The book is well worthy of study, for, leaving aside the many legends which are connected with Warwick Castle, it proves the historic pile, which is the bourne of so many American pilgrimages, to have been built by the daughter of Alfred the Great, and to have belonged in turn to the houses of Newburgh, of beauchamp, of Neville, of Dudley and of Greville; the house of Rich, which for 140 years enjoyed the possession of the earldom of Warwick, having never owned Warwick Castle.

Warwick Castle belonged to the Dudleys when it was visited by Queen Elizabeth, and among its most frequent guests was Amy Robert, wife of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and the heroine of Sir Walter Scott's novel of "Kenilworth." The Dudley Earl of Warwick played a considerable role in the opening up of this country. It was he who furnished Sir Martin Frobisher with the means of making all those discoveries in the northern part of this hemisphere which are commemorated, among other things, by what is now Frobisher's Bay, and by the so-called Countess of Warwick Island, north of Hudson Straits. This Lord and Lady Warwick may be said to have ruined themselves in efforts to explore, develop and colonize this country, and among their fellow-sufferers were Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Queen Elizabeth herself.

It was another of Queen Elizabeth's favorites, namely, Fluke Greville, who obtained from her successor, King James I., a grant of the then half-ruined Warwick cAstle and dependencies, being raised to the peerage as Lord Brooke. Stabbed and killed when already on his deathbed by a servant who was angered at finding that he had not been remembered in his master's will, the barony of Brooke and Warwick Castle, with all the other estates, passed, according to a special remainder of the peerage, to his cousin, Robert Greville, as second Lord Brooke, the eighth Lord Brooke and eighth of the Greville owners of Warwick castle being raised, first to the earldom of Brooke, and fifteen years later to the earldom of Warwick, on the death without issue of the last of the Earls of Warwick of the house of Rich. This was in 1758, and the present Lord Warwick is only the fifth earl of this creation.

The house of Rich may be said to have been founded by that rascally lord chancellor who gave evidence against Sir Thomas More, and who took a personal part in the torture os Anne Askew, among its most notable members having been Penelope Rich, who was the "stella" of Sir Philip Sydney, and Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, who married Addison. The house of Greville itself was founded by a merchant of London of the name of William Greville, who owned money to Richard II.

Good Night! Good Luck!
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