Annette’s 18th Great Grandfather, Sir Hugh de Clitheroe.
The thing with genealogy is – the further you go back, the more ancestors you have. And the converse is true – your eighteenth great grandfather would have thousands of descendants who are all distant cousins.
And that’s certainly the case the Sir Hugh de Clitheroe, which the website fabpedigree.com has identified as being the ancestor of quite a few famous names. For a start, the late Diana, Princess of Wales shares her ancestor with Annette (Sir Hugh is believed to be her 19th Great Grandfather). Her ex-husband, Prince Charles, also belongs to the family, with Sir Hugh probably being his 20th Great Grandfather. Intriguingly, Sir Hugh is not only at the top of a royal family tree (well, branch, anyway) but also a political one. He was Sir Winston Churchill’s 17th Great Grandfather, and the 16th Great Grandfather of former US President Rutherford Birchard Hayes, the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881. Former British Prime Minister David Cameron is also a cousin, being Sir Hugh’s 21st-great grandson.
The link to Annette comes through the Vernon/Hatton/Glayzer side of the family (there’s a PDF laying it all out here). So who was Sir Hugh?
He was born around 1346 (though some say it was earlier than this, some a little later). His seal bears the name Sir Hugonis de Clederos, and the name is spelled Clitheroe, Cliderow, Cliderowe, Clyderhowe, and Clyderowe. He was the second son of Adam de Clitheroe of Salesbury in Lancashire, and his older brother Robert succeeded to the manor of Salesbury. By 1368 Hugh possessed the manor of Wimpole, and a deed by his widow just months after his death refers to him as Hugh Clyderhoe of Wympol. This information has been shared by another distant cousin – this time in France, so many thanks to Jean-Charles Terlinden. Other than that, history records very little about Sir Hugh. He had two wives, the first one’s name is lost to history. His second wife, Isabel de Gras (Annette’s 18th Great Grandmother) married again after Sir Hugh’s death, to Thomas Bourne, and lived to the ripe old age of 96 (which in those days was extremely unusual).
The truth is, when you get that far back, a lot of people could find that they are related. But that’s part of the fun.
