EMMA LIZZIE GREENE

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Alan la Zouche, 1st Baron la Zouche of Ashby

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Sir Alexander de la Zouche, 1st Lord of Boketon

Alexander was born Abt. 1181 in Northamptonshire, England, son of Geoffrey de la Zouche, Viscount de Porhoet, and wife Hawise de Fergant. His paternal grandparent were Alan De La Zouche born Abt. 1066 (Viscount de Porhoet) and wife Constance de Bretagne. His maternal grandparents were Alain IV Fergant duc de Bretagne (~1070-13 Oct 1119) and Ermangarde D'Anjou. He is a direct descendant of William I The Conqueror by his great grandmother Maud FitzRoy (daughter of King of England, Henry I Beauclerc and mistress Sibyl Corbet).

Sir Alexander was born under the 'Hohenstaufen Dynasty' with first emperor Frederick I reigning at his birth (c1152-1190, crowned 1155), then emperor Henry VI (1190-1197, crowned 1191). SOURCE: Universal Standard Encylclopedia, Vol. 12, Pgs. 4370-4373

Alexander, a younger son of the de la Zouche family, was given an estate and title as a "Great Baron" by King John of England in 1202 AD. The estate was that of de Greene de Boketon. Walter de Boketon, was in the Seventh Crusade in 1244. Walter's son, John de Greene de Boketon, died in the next crusade in 1271 leaving a year old son, Thomas, who became Sir Thomas de Greene (married Alice Bottisham). Then came Thomas de Greene (b: c1288) who married Lady Lucy de la Zouche, his relative.

Abt. 1202, Sir Alexander married Lady Isabelle De Cantilupe (~1186 Reading & Market, Ellesborough, Buckshire, England). She was the daughter of Sir William De Cantilupe and Lady Mecelina Marcelina De Braci. Sir Alexander and Lady Isabelle had at least two known children: Sir Walter, 2nd Lord of Boketon (~1202-~1275); and Alexander (~1235-???). It is commonly assumed that all their children were born at their estate in Boughton (fka Boketon), Northamptonshire, England. This area is now known as Greene's Norton.

The Greene family is an English and American family, its history being divided into two periods, from 1202 to 1635 in England, and from 1635 to the present in America. In the period for 1630 to 1640, that of the great Puritan Migration into Massachusetts, several men by the name of Greene came to the colonies, most of them settling in New England. Of all these, two of them are of particular interest to us. Both of their names were John, and their wives names were Joan. They were second cousins german, that is, one was the second cousin of the other's father. The elder of these John Greenes settled in Warwick, Rhode Island, after a short sojourn in Massachusetts.

He was the founder of the Warwick Greenes, who have furnished more men in public life to the State of Rhode Island than any other family in the state. It is from this family that General Nathanael Greene is descended. (MY NOTE: The "Warwick Greene's" is my direct ancestry.)

The other John Greene settled at Quidnessett and became the founder of the Quidnessett Greenes. These two related families ha ve multiplied so that today, not even the Smiths, Joneses, or Johnsons outnumber them in their native state. It is said to be unwise to speak ill of any Rhode Islander to a Greene because he is sure to be a Greene or a kin of the Greenes! Rhode Island itself might better have been called the State of Greene because of the part the Greene family has played in its entire history from the beginning, the two John Greenes being associated with Roger Williams in the founding of the colony.

He who steps out into the night finds at first that all is gross darkness, but as he gropes his way, dim landmarks begin to shape themselves out of the darkness. The faint rays of light grow plainer, and the traveller at last walks in a path that has familiar objects to the right and the left to show him how far he has come and in what direction he is going. So in this history, the beginning of the Greene family is shrouded in the night of the unchronicled story of centuries ago. A date or two comes down to us. The hazy figure of Lord Alexander rises like a ghost from his seven centuries of dust. There is a certain branching and widening out of the family. Not until the fourth lord of the line comes more than the name of the Lords de Greene.

King John bestowed the estate of Boughton in Northampton upon Alexander in 1202. John was the ruler of both England and France and apparently awarded Boughton, or Boketon, to Lord Alexander in return for the latter's support during a rebellion that raged in England while the king was in France putting down a similar rebellion there. The exact extent of the estate is not known, but the least a great baron could own and hold his rank was fifty hides of land, i.e., six thousand acres. Halstead, in his Succinct Genealogies, a very rare work done in 1585, says that at one time the Greenes were the largest land owners in the kingdom.

Lord Alexander assumed a surname after his chief estate Grene de Boketon, i.e., the Lord of the Park of the Deer Enclosure. A green in the early day was a park. Boketon is an old, old word meaning the buck's ton, or paled-in enclosure. Centuries ago the terminal syllable, ton, had lost its original sense and meant a town. So that Boketon, still used in the original sense, shows that Lord Alexander came to an estate named long before and noted for its extensive parks and deer preserves. Boketon became Bucks, Buckston, and later Boughton, its present name. It lies in Northampton.

The name "Greene" was originally written "de Grene". It appears that the Greene's assumed their name from an allusion to their principal nad beloved manor which was Buckton, Town of Bucks, in the County of Northampton, England. The place was known for the excellency of its soil, its situation, and its spacious and delightful green. From Buckton, they assumed three bucks for their coat of arms. They were Lords of the Manor and owned many stately castles.

For five generations the de Grenes (now Greene or Green) spoke Norman-French. They were a family that delighted in athletic sports. They hunted, hawked, and attended tournaments, played games of tennis, cricket, and bowls. All of them in their generations were noted for their fine bowling alleys, two or three of which were the finest in England.

Charles I was arrested at Althorpe, where he had gone to bowl, and this once belonged to the Greenes.

Sir Alexander had a passionate love of horticulture that has throughout these seven centuries dominated his entire line of descendants. There is probably no other English speaking family today that has so many members that delight in beautiful home grounds and in flowers and fruit and finely kept farms.

In 1215, when the English Lords forced King John to sign the Magna Carta, there were only seven barons that adhered to John and Lord Alexander de Boketon was not one of them.

Therefore, he must have been one of the two thousand nobles who put their united protests in the hands of twenty-five lords who presented the Magna Carta to the king and forced him to sign that document that guaranteed both the lives and the property of his subjects from arbitrary spoliation. One of the signers was Roger, Earl of Winchester, whose great-great granddaughter, Lucie de la Zouche, married Sir Alexander de Boketon's great-great grandson, Lord Thomas Greene (5th generation). SOURCE: Maxson Frederick Greene, http://www.paintedhills.org/green_family.htm

The Greene family was a branch of the de la Zouche family of whom Gibbon, the historian, said that they had the most royal blood and the most strain of royal blood in all Europe. The Greene's at one time were the largest land owners in all England. They were over fifty times descent of Charlemagne (known as 'Charles the Great, King of the Franks and Emperor of the West'), the greatest man of a thousand years.

There were a dozen decents from Alfred the Great and fifty from Wittekind. They had the blood of Irish, Scotch, Saxon, English, and Bohemian Kings; they came from ancient Parthian Emperors long before the time of our Lord Jesus Christ; regular heathens; Russian rulers; French Kings; Constantine the Great; and Basil the Great, the Byzantine Emperor.

Through the Royal Welsh line, they claimed a double infusion of Jewish blood -- one line from Aaron, the first High Priest; the other from King David himself. Queen Victoria of the same blood firmly believed this. A dozen titular saints, a dozen signers of the Magna Charta, and over thirty crusaders were in this descent.

Wittekind's line of descent is as follows: Wittekind -- the German hero whom Charlemagne conquered and converted to Christianity, and married Princess Geva. Robert the Strong -- the grandson of Wittekind and Geva. He married Adelaide le Debonnaire, the daughter of Emperor Louis le Debonnaire and granddaughter of Charlemagne. Hugh -- the King maker of France. Hugh Capet (his son). King Robert I. King Henry I of France -- and through their wives from Emperors of Germany, Czars of Russia, Emperors of Byzantine, the early Saxon Kings and William the Conqueror. Then eight generations more with the Royal Welsh, Spanish, Irish, and Scotch heirs in their veins to Lady Lucy de la Zouche (b: c1279) who married her relative Sir Thomas de Greene (b: c1288).

They remained in the royal line for several hundred years. Saher de Quincey, Earl of Winchester, and one of the Magna Charta Barons, wrested the Great Charter from King John on the field of Runnymede in June of 1215.

In King Edward the III's reign (1327-1377), Sir Henry Greene (1310-1370) obtained for himself and his heirs the grand of a fair to be held yearly for three days beginning on the vigil of St. John the Baptist. Since that time down to the middle of the nineteenth century this fair was held up on the spacious green which gave name to the Greene family.

In the reign of Henry V (1413-1422), Sir Thomas Greene was warden of Whittlebury Forest, an office which he "held in capite of the King by service of lifting up his hand towards the King yearly on Christmas Day in what place so-ever the King is."

Sir Henry de Greene was the Lord Chief Justice of England, and the ancestor of six Sir Thomas' who succeeded one another on the estate of Northampton without interruption. The last one died in 1506 leaving a daughter, Mathilda or Maude Greene, who married Sir Thomas Parr. Katherine Parr, the daughter of this Sir Thomas Parr and Mathilda or Maude Greene, was the sixth and last Queen of Henry VIII (1509-1547). At her death the estate passed to the Crown, but was restored t othe Greene's in 1550 by a grant from Edward VI (1547-1553) who gave it to his uncle, Katherine Parr's brother, Sir Thomas Parr. This Sir Thomas Parr was a Knight of the Garter.

Robert Greene, Gentleman of Bowridge Hill, Gillingham, County of Dorsetshire, England, was taxed on the subsidy rolls of Henry VIII in 1547 and those of Queen Elizabeth in 1558. (REF: papers from Mrs. William B. Smith (30) of DeCatur, Georgia, as given in "A Family Genealogy" by William Henry Beck, III).

The family name of Greene is derived, says Somerby, from possessions held in Northamptonshire as early as the times of King Edward I. In 1320 Sir Thomas de Greene, Lord of Broughton (or Boughton), and Norton, later called "Greene's Norton", succeeded to the estate. His son, Sir Henry de Greene, Lord of Greene's Norton, was Lord Chief Justice in 1353. The tomb of the latter which remains perfect, is ornamented with many shields showing different houses with with he was connected, and conspicuous among them is the coat of arms of his own family.

The mother of Sir Thomas de Greene (Lady Lucy de la Zouche), was a direct descendant of Henry I of France; of Saher (or Saer) de Quincey, Earl of Winchester, one of the twenty-five barons who extorted the Magna Charta from King John; and also of Alfred the Great of England. (REF: "Americans of Royal Descent" by Charles Browning).

REFERENCES: Taken from paper from Mrs. Frank Graham of Dawson, Georgia; arranged by Miss Mary E. Lathrop, assisted by Mrs. Henry Waterman of Central Falls, Rhode Island; and Mrs. Mary A. Greene of Providence, Rhode Island, as accounted by William Henry Beck, III --- "A Family Genealogy". URL: http://www.geocities.com/pameladhudson/greenehistory.html

In the year 1202, King John of England bestowed the estate of Boketon (Boughton) on Alexander, a knight in his court. The following year (1203), "Alexander de Boketon recovered the advowson of the Church of St. John the Baptist at Boketon (a seigniorial right of the Lords of Boketon) against Simon de Hecter and Simon de Boketon.

In 1202, there were only two titles of nobility: earls and knights. The knights were subdivided into greater and lesser barons. The great barons held their estates from the crown. The lesser barons held their estates as a subdivision from an overlord or great baron. Lord Alexander was a great and wealthy baron, and one of the largest land owners in all of England. He had power over his estate like a petty king. In exchange for the power granted from the king, he had to furnish many men for the king's wars, pay a portion toward the dowry of the princesses, and entertain the king when the king was in his territory. In addition, he had to pay homage to the crown. The Lords de Grene paid homage from 1202 to 1506 "by lifting up his right hand toward the king yearly on Christmas Day, in what place soever the king is." (Halstead's Genealogy, 1585). A household account by the steward of Lord Alexander exists that states that his master's household consisted of 166 persons, including the forbisher who kept the armor bright, the fencing master, harper, priest, bedesman or praying man, the almoner who looked after the poor, and the barner who kept the 24-hour fires in the castle in order. Lord Alexander kept an open table, and fed an average of 57 visitors a day. The knights sat with the Lord at one end of the table, and were served the choicest foods. The retainers and commoners sat "below the salt" and ate coarser victuals, or as we say now, "humble pie."

The Lords de Grene lived in state. They wore rich apparel, belted with a gold or silver girdle to which was attached a purse, rosary, pen, ink horn, set of keys, and an elaborately chased and sheathed dagger. These accoutrements showed their rank. When they rode, they always wore gold spurs, and their armor was brightly polished and magnificent. They wore robes in Parliament, hats and plumes at court and at the king's coronation, and a crimson velvet cap lined with ermine and having a plain gold band. Their servants wore the Greene livery, which was blue laced with gold.

Although they lived in a period of early marriages, the Greene preferred to marry late in life. Nonetheless, they managed to have large families, often more boys than girls. The de Grenes had many purely family superstitions. One of them was their dislike of having a picture made of themselves. Even as late as 1850, some of them would not permit a picture of them to be made.

Boughton (Boketon) lies a few miles north of the town of Northampton. It was known as an estate before the Conquest (1088). It contained 1,400 acres of good soil. Boughton Manor remained in the Greene family until about 1700, when it was purchased by Thomas Wentworth, third Lord Stafford. It later passed through other hands. In 1822, it was mostly leveled to the ground and a large new house took its place. To this day, the town of Boughton retains the appearance of an ancient town. A walk through the village revealed that the houses had been carefully modernized so as to not detract from the outward medieval appearance of the buildings. In the rural cemetery was found the ruins of an ancient church, a part of the ivy-covered walls still standing. This may be the location of the original parish church at Boughton, dedicated to St. John the Baptist. It stood on the green near a famous spring. As early as the time of Henry VIII, it had begun to fall into decay. By 1785, nothing remained but ruins. There seems to be no description of the interior extant. It contained the tombs of some of the early members of the Greene family.

Baker, in his History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire presented an account of two of the Greene monuments. One of these bore the arms of Greene and those of allied families of Zouche, Drayton, and Marblethorpe. The other had "a portraiture of a man in a short gowne yt should shew hym a lawyer, having also a s'geant's coyfe. His wyfe also lies in portraiture by him."

On this tomb, at the head, were sculptured the arms of Greene; on the south side they were repeated, and near them the Zouch device; on the north, Greene between Zouch impaling Greene, and Reynes impaling Greene, showing marriages with the daughters of Greene, who were probably here interred. At the foot of the tomb was a shield bearing a fess between six crosses patee, the arms of a family not named by Baker, who remarks that this monument had been erroneously assigned to the Greene who married a Marblethorpe; "but, as the Lord Chief Justice was the only one of the family who attained to legal eminence, and his daughter having married Zouch and Reyes, it may with confidence be applied to him."

SOURCE: "Colonial Families of America" by McKenzie, Volumes I and II

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ALAN LA ZOUCHE, 1ST BARON LA ZOUCHE OF ASHBY : Encyclopedia Entry (556 words) Alan la Zouche, 1st Baron la Zouche of Ashby (October 9, 1267 – March 25, 1314) was born at North Molton, the son of Roger La Zouche and his wife, Ela Longespee, daughter of Maurice Fitz Maurice and Emmeline Longespee. Alan was governor of Rockingham Castle and steward of Rockingham Forest, England. Alan was in Gascony with King Edward I of England in October 1288, when he was one of the hostages given by the king to Alfonso of Aragon for the fulfillment of certain agreements. More results at FactBites »