The Grebson Family History

I’ve been doing some research on my lineage – nothing new there, and I have discovered quite an extraordinary article on the Grebsons called “The Greystoke Lineage” By Philip Jose Farmer - http://members.aol.com/kickaha23/grebson.html. Extracts of that article are reproduced here with gratitude and a flagrant disregard for copyright.

The article is about the lineage of the original Tarzan, namely Lord Greystoke, but the Greystoke family appear intimately connected with the Grebsons. Now I cannot definitively prove that these are my Grebsons, but as you will see what a wonderful thing it would be if I were.

Farmer begins by saying “the lineage herein is as if taken from the pages of Burke's Peerage. The real coat of arms and lineage of "Lord Greystoke" cannot be presented here, of course. But over half of the people and almost all of the places in the lineage are true. The others are not really fictional; they are just disguised.” Hmmm Interesting.

The lineage begins with WESTERFALCNA, b. ca. 578, son of King Aelle of Deira by Osburgh, a Wessex woman, claimed descent from the God Woden through Waegdaeg, of south Denmark, c260 A.D. The present monarch of England also claims descent from Woden.

Westerfalcna, who called himself Graegbeardssunu (Old English for "The Son of The Grey-Bearded One," an epithet for Woden) fled after Aelle was slain and Aethelric, king of Bernicia, seized the throne. In what is now the North Riding of Yorkshire, Westerfalcna erected on a peak a wooden fort, GREBSON’S HOLD.

Next up is GODWULF OF GREBSON who married a daughter of Komak Sigurdsson, Irish-Norwegian lord of the neighbouring holding eventually known as Sigerside.

His son, GODWULF, married a daughter of the lord of Greystoke, Cumberland.

GODWULF, Godwulf's grandson, married a cousin, and fell at Stamford where the invading Norwegian, King Harald Haardrada, was killed. Godwulf's brother, Westerfalcna, who had married a sister of his brother's wife, was also present at Stamford. He marched with King Harold of England to Hastings and was slain.

BEOWULF, Westerfalcna's son, was born posthumously with his cousin, Godwulf's son.

The lordship of GREBSON then passed into the hands of RAINULPH FITZGILBERT, brother of Richard FitzGilbert, or De Clare, who received 176 lordships after accompanying William the Conqueror into England. Rainulph married Westerfalcna's widow, and, his six children dying in infancy because, it is said, of a curse, adopted Beowulf as his son and heir on the condition he change his name to Rainulph FitzRainulph (an early sign of the Grebson ability to disappear up oneself?).

Apparently the Grebsons were suspected of being secret worshipers of the pagan god, Woden, and, indeed, for four centuries thereafter, many Grebsons were burned or hung for witchcraft, though none in the direct line of descent.

Lord FitzGilbert and Rainulph swore fealty to King William Rufus, son of the William the Conqueror, and perhaps related to Rufus of Rufus and Chaka Khan fame. This giant Norse king, one of the great warriors and travellers of the Viking age, is said by William of Malmsbury to have been thrown down to a lion while a prisoner in Constantinople but to have strangled it with his bare hands.

Next up is Sir John FitzJohn of Grebson born 1145 – he had a natural son by a Welsh slave (I’ve always had an affinity for the Welsh) was one of the few Englishmen who accompanied Richard I, the Lion-Hearted, on his crusade. John, knighted outside Acre, returned in 1199 with a Saracen bride, Ayesha, daughter of the half-Persian Abdul el Dehshetli, cousin to Saladin and descendant of both Mohammed and Zarathustra. Do you see where this is going?

Farmer tells us that the sinister crest of the Grebson coat of arms is "a spear or transfixing a Saracen's head gules." That is, a golden spear stuck through a red-hued Mohammedan's head. A Saracen's head usually commemorates an ancestor who has been on a crusade to the Holy Land. The Grebson crest is coloured gules instead of the proper, or natural, colour because of Sir John's use of the severed head of a Moslem while escaping from Acre. After cutting off the head, Sir John threw it, knocked another soldier off his horse, and fled with Ayesha through the momentarily opened gates.

Farmer says it is worth noting that Tarzan's ancestor, Mohammed, belonged to the Qoreish, the dominant tribe of Mecca since 440 A.D. These claimed descent from Qosaiy, whose ancestors were, supposedly, Abraham and Ishmael.

So if I get all this right, not only could I be descended from the pagan God Woden and share lineage with our Royal Family, but I could also be descended from one of the original crusaders and from Mohammed. Maybe that’s where I get my Jewish self-loathing and general identity confusion from? The Viking connection might also explain my love of Scandanavian electronica! Oh yeah, and me Tarzan.

Farmer goes on to list a load of other famous Grebsons including…

RICHARD "THE BLACK LION," 1st BARON GREBSON, so declared by a writ issued by Henry III in 1222. Richard married Catherine O'Brien and returned from Ireland with her and her brother, Finn O'Brien, "The Red Bull of Munster," exiled for having killed his cousin in a quarrel. He lived on the Grebson estate until he married Rebecca, a daughter of John Griffin, ancestor of the Barons Griffin of Braybroke Castle of Northants. This was the first recorded connection between the Grebsons and the Griffins (later known as the Olis)

In Italy he eloped with Alessandra, daughter of Alessandro de Parco, Count of Scarlassi-Longobardo. This illustrious family, now extinct, could trace its ancestry to Julius Caesar, who, in turn, claimed descent from the goddess Venus. The 1st Baron and his wife died in 1238, presumably of poison administered by an agent of Alessandra's father.

JOHN CALDWELL-GREBSON, 3rd BARON, a landless knight claiming to be of Scots descent. The 3rd Baron being slain during an encounter with the officers of Edward I in 1280, his son assumed the lordship of Grebson. There is little doubt that the 3rd Baron was, in actuality, Richard, son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, known at one time as Norman of Torn. Richard. Kidnapped at the age of three, Richard was raised as "Norman" of (the ruined tower of) Torn in the hills of Derby by De Vac, a Gascon who hated Henry III, and who taught Norman to hate Englishmen.

JOHN CALDWELL, 4th BARON OF GREBSON. The 4th Baron, outlawed in 1296, fled with relatives and retainers into the hills of Derby. A great bowman, and dressed in Lincoln green, he became known as The Green Baron, or The Green Archer. The story of his long fight against Edward I and Edward II has, according to some, been incorporated into the legend of Robin Hood, along with that of Robert Fitzooth. The 4th Baron was pardoned by Edward II in 1325. The baron died in an attempt to rescue his king, who was imprisoned in Berkeley Castle and was murdered there on 21 Sep 1327.

ROBERT, 5th BARON OF GREBSON. Married Katherine Drummond. The Drummonds, according to unvarying tradition, are of Hungarian origin, Maurice, the first of that family who settled in Scotland, having come from that country in 1066 with Edgar the Atheling and Margaret, his sister, afterwards wife of King Malcolm III of Scotland. Maurice adopted the name Drummond from the Gaelic "druim" and "monadh," that is "back of the mountain." Maurice was the son of George, a younger son of Andreas, King of Hungary. Andreas could trace his ancestry to Arpad, the Magyar king who conquered Hungary (died 907). The 5th Baron's wife disappeared during a visit to her father in 1340, it being presumed that bandits had murdered her and buried her and her cortege. The 5th Baron died a year later of a broken abscess in his ear.

SIR JOHN MALCOLM, 6th BARON and 1st EARL OF GREBSON. Sir John accompanied Edward III's son, The Black Prince, into France and was knighted on the battlefield of Crecy. Sir John sickened of the Black Death in 1348, but, recovering, built a chapel at Grebson and founded a priory outside Macclesfield, where he had recovered. Sir John was made 1st Earl of Grebson in 1357. His lordship died choking on a fish-bone in 1359, and was succeeded by his daughter, Joane, 7th Baroness and 2nd Countess. Lord and Lady Grebson were murdered by their vassals during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 and were succeeded by Thomas Ralph, 8th Baron and 3rd Earl, born 1366. His lordship died of infection from a foot crushed by a horse.

As you can see, the lineage goes on and on and I won’t bore you with all the details but other noteworthy Grebsons include…

Captain John Dermod Caldwell-Grebson became immensely wealthy through privateering (actually, piracy).

Captain John Charles Caldwell-Grebson, killed 5 Jul 1643 while serving with Sir John, 1st Baron Byron, at Roundaway Down, and succeeded by his second son, Ralph Arthur, famous for his strength and reported to have been able to lift a full-grown bull above his head. Ralph Arthur died of a bee sting.

His son, John Charles Conyers, 12th Baron, born 1668, married the daughter of Dolores Maria Salvador. Dolores's family could trace their ancestry back to Rodrigo Diaz (b. 1043), known as El Cid.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Gracia, Baroness Grebson of Grebson, married the grandson of Harold Cecil, the only child of the 3rd Earl Staveley of Staveley Hall, Islington. The 3rd Earl was descended from George Clayton of Grimsby, ancestor also of Lord Tennyson, the poet, and from John, or Thomas, Horner, steward to the last Abbot of Glastonbury. When Henry VIII dissolved the monastic orders and seized so much church property, the abbot sent deeds to twelve manorial estates to the king to appease him. These were baked into a pie to fool robbers and were delivered by the steward. On the way, Horner opened the pie and appropriated the deed to the estate of Mells. Hence, the nursery rhyme of "Little Jack Horner."

The only son of this union, John, was stolen at the age of two, his abductors proposing to sell him, a criminal practice quite common at this time. The authorities being close on their trail, the abductors disposed of John to a beggar woman who, in turn, sold him to a gypsy woman. She named him Bob (not "Robert") Singleton, the only name he knew during most of his life. The gypsy woman being hanged when Bob was six, he was raised by various parishes. At twelve, he was taken to Newfoundland as a cabin boy on a ship. Much of his life is detailed with more or less validity by Daniel Defoe in the biography Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton, published in 1720. The narrative, however, ends in 1711.

At the age of 18, Singleton, marooned on Madagascar, sailed with 24 other seamen to the coast of Africa near the mouth of the Zambezi River. From there he began a three-year odyssey which ended at Cape Coast Castle in what is now Ghana. This feat, covering a total of more than 5,000 miles through unexplored jungles and deserts and mountains inhabited by lions, leopards, poisonous snakes, and cannibals, and infested with malaria, tsetse flies, and diseases of many and terrible sorts, is unmatched in history.

General Sir William, V.C., K.C.B. [1st Bt.], author of many book and much poetry, born 1 Jan 1799; due to his somewhat colourful life he was the object of much gossip and even caricature in the newspapers, being called "Wandering Willie," "Billy Banns," and "Marrying Bill," or, because of the tendency of his wives to die, "The Bluebeard Baronet" or "Gruesome Grebson." He was buried in the family cemetery by the ruins of Grebson's Hold below the inscription of the family motto, Je suys encore vyvant -- I Still Live.

So in summary I could well be descended from a line that includes:

Woden
Mohammed
Julius Caesar
Venus
Henry III
Numerous North European kings
Tarzan
Robin Hood
The Queen
Alfred Lord Tennyson and
Little Jack Horner.

Respect!