A very frustrating time since the last update: I had it all prepared on March 7th 2002 and then went through my usual routine to update my sub-site at Freewebz.com. Freewebz was off the air for management of site content, though the sites were still here. It took four days and no explanation before they were back for update. So I sent over the various enormous zipped files, hoping particularly to unzip the new genealogy for open access. But something had gone wrong with their unzipping program and it took them three separate attempts until today, the 9th April,before I could update the main access with the latest data. Grrrrr!

Anyhow it is now there for you to see.

I have continued to go through the senior peers from Complete Peerage to update their records, only another 150 or so to do. But this has come to grinding halt due to the ill-health and consequent relocation of my nonagenarian father. And, before anyone comments, I am less than happy with the way I did the references for the baronial families; one day I shall have to go back to them and insert precise page numbers.

I have finally taken the plunge and decided to update the records of our family that are held by the College of Arms. I first got from them the text of the three names changes of my great and great-great grandparents. These were all done by Royal Licence so I guessed that the College would have copies and, indeed, they did. To these three can of course be added the fourth Royal Licence, that obtained by my grandfather to adopt as his personal arms a quartering of the Lybbe with the Powys arms.

Back to the plot; I decided that we should also have it codified in the College that my paternal grandmother was an heraldic heiress in her issue, that is that we can quarter additionally all the Trotter quarterings. This only required that I produce birth and death certificates for her and all her five siblings; curiously none of her five siblings married and none had any children.

For my and subsequent generations, the College is gentleman enough to accept my word. Being a scholar and a gent myself, this has meant I had to get this right and asking around my siblings for their marriage dates and the dates of their children has been more effort than ambling off to the Family History Centre in Myddleton Street and looking them up.

I have enquired of the College to find exactly what information they want and hope to supply that within the month.

There have been a few notable acquisitions. The best has been Alumni Cantabriensis on CDROM which I spent a day or three printing out information on ancestral students there. The best was to find that the Rev Geo Walker, vicar of Stockton-on-Tees, had a known father, Thomas, a shoemaker of Wakefield who is now added to the database. The entry also gave George's death date of 1742. I have yet to add all the other Cantab information.

I also received Volume I of Keats-Rohan's magisterial "Domesday People", also barely consulted, yet.

Finally I have found a distant relationship to the Tyrrwhitt-Drake's of Amersham, once upon a time the power in that little town. The common ancestor is a Sir John Gerrard from whose daughter Jane descended the Twysdens, Lybbes and then Powyses and from whose son descended the Drakes and then the Tyrrwhitt-Drakes.