Magna Charta Sureties, 1215. Fifth Edition

By Frederick Lewis Weis

Book Overview

At the signing of the Magna Charta, twenty-five men, representing the barons, signed as sureties of the baronial performance, in effect pledging the barons to fulfill their obligations to the Crown in accordance with the terms of the Great Charter. Of these twenty-five sureties only seventeen have identified descendants. Each of the seventeen is represented in the celebrated "Magna Charta Sureties," which traces their connections--line by line and generation by generation--to approximately 160 American colonists. Eight years have passed since the publication of the last edition of this work, however, and in the interval a great many additions, corrections, and revisions have accumulated. Brought to a very high standard by the unremitting efforts of its editor, Walter Lee Sheppard, Jr., this fifth edition incorporates new lines, corrects errors in existing lines, adds recently discovered material, and supplies references where they had previously been omitted. The result is a reliable and authoritative collection of interlocking pedigrees which carry the ancestry of some 160 American colonists back to the thirteenth century. With the possible exception of Weis's "Ancestral Roots" (also published by Genealogical Publishing Co.), this is probably the very best work ever written on the pre-colonial ancestry of American colonists.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806316098
• ISBN13: 9780806316093
• Release Date: December 2009
• Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Company
• Length: 238 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A must buy for descendants of Magna Carta Sureties

This book is an excellent resource for those researching descents from one of the Magna Carta Barons or those named in the preamble as advisors to King John. Each line is accompanied by a list of sources for the descent from one of the Barons to an American Colonist.

Outstanding Readable Reference Work

While there are numerous reference works relating the descendancy of the Magna Charta Barons, this one is concise, documented and continues across the Atlantic to the early Colonists of North America. Being unencumbered with commentaries on historical events, this book reveals lineage after lineage after lineage providing the researcher with an invaluable tool to document centuries of family history.