Kingsbury family

The Kingsbury family is a family descended from royal ancestors of medieval England, from the Kingdom of Mercia.^[1] They were involved in colonial and frontier settlement of the United States, and influential in England.

According to various sources which range from studies by historian Michael Jones,^[2] studies on Knighthood in early English society by Peter Cross ^[3] and others by the Royal Historical Society ^[4] including an early 20th-century genealogist, F. J. Kingsbury, the Kingsbury family is thought to be descendants of the Bracebridge family, whose ancestry is traced to Sir Ralf of Bracebridge, an English knight born in 975. This bloodline includes Lady Godiva and her husband Leofric, Earl of Mercia, who was descended from the Saxon kings of the lordship of Kingsbury.^[5] The Kingsbury family is also purportedly related to William Shakespeare.^[6]^[7] The genealogical links with the Shakespeares have been explored and tabulated in an early volume on the dramatis personae of Shakespeare, by George Russell French.^[8]

The surname

The present-day Kingsbury family has had many spelling variants of its surname, including:

de Kingsberry
de Kingsbury
de Kyngesburie
de Kyngesbury
de Kyngesburye
Kingsberry
Kingsbery
Kingsbury
Kyngesbury

There has been conjecture that the Kingsbury family also previously went by these surnames:

Bracebridge
de Bracebridge

History

900-1100

The Kingsbury family's earliest known member is Sir Ralf of Bracebridge, who was born in 975 in Bracebridge, Lincolnshire, England.
Kingsbury descendants in Warwickshire traced their ancestry to Leofric, Earl of Mercia and Lady Godiva.^[9] The children of Leofric and Godiva include Ælfgār and possibly, Hereward the Wake. The Earl of Mercia is said to be descended from the Saxon kings of Mercia.^[10] He inherited their ancient seat.

1100-1300

The Bracebridge family first appear in records of the town of Kingsbury, Warwickshire in circa 1115, when Sir Peter de Bracebridge and Amicia Arden were married there.
The first-known family member to bear the surname "Kingsbury" was Adam de Kingsbury,' who was born about 1240 in Kingsbury, Warwickshire. His name meant only that he was from the locality of Kingsbury, before surnames were widely used.

1500-1700

According to family genealogist F. J. Kingsbury, writing in 1905 when standards had not been established, William Shakespeare was a descendant of the Kingsbury family. Leofric's daughter married Turchil de Arden, one of William the Conqueror's Norman knights. Their granddaughter married Peter de Bracebridge, in whose family the lordship remained until the time of Queen Elizabeth I. A daughter of this side of the family married Sir John Arden, of Arden, who was the grandfather of Mary Arden, Shakespeare's mother. Kingsbury thinks Shakespeare referred to this in his lines:

'When nightingales in Arden sit and sing Among the daintie dew-empearlèd flowers..'.^[11]

In his genealogical study on the Ardens and the Shakespeares, French also makes similar claims, tabulating the linkages between the Bracebridges, Kingsburys, Ardens and Shakespeares ^[12]