Magna Carta, my ancestors

The Magna Carta of 1215

British Library Cotton MS Augustus II 106

The Photo: one of only 4 known copies of the 1215 Magna Carta a charter agreed to by King John of England with his Barons at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. The charter set down for the first time rules governing what the king could and could not do. Two copies are held by the British Library and one each by the cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury.

 

My ancestors and the Magna Carta: There is only a very tangential association with any of my ancestors and the Barons who signed the Magna Carta in 1225 and possibly the original in 1215. I was interested in the possible connection because June 15, 2015 was the 800^th anniversary of signing the original document. There is no known list of the original signers, but there is a list of the names of the 25 Barons who were delegated to oversee the terms of the agreement in the copy revised in 1225. In the brief biographies of these men, by Professor Nigel Saul, Royal Holloway, University of London, only two families seem to have any connection with Wales and both were Welsh Marcher Lords: 1) Richard de Clare and Gilbert de Clare, Earls of Hertford and used interchangeably with that of earl of Clare. 2) The younger William Marshal (c. 1190-1231). On his father’s death in 1219 he succeeded him as earl of Pembroke and marshal of England, while on his mother’s death in the following year he succeeded to the lordships of Chepstow in South Wales and Leinster in Ireland.  For Professor Nigel Saul’s brief biographies of the 25 see the article HERE 

Marcher Lords power: From the Wikipedia article ‘Marcher Lord’: “The Anglo-Norman lordships in this area were distinct in several ways: they were geographically compact and jurisdictionally separate one from another, and they had special privileges which separated them from the usual English lordships. Royal writ did not obtain in the Marches: Marcher lords ruled their lands by their own law—sicut regale ("like a king") as Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, stated (Nelson 1966), whereas in England fief-holders were directly accountable to the king. Marcher lords could build castles, a jealously guarded and easily revoked Royal privilege in England. Marcher lords administered laws, waged war, established markets in towns, and maintained their own chanceries that kept their records (which have been completely lost). They had their own deputies, or sheriffs. Sitting in their own courts they had jurisdiction over all cases at law save high treason. "They could establish forests and forest laws, declare and wage war, establish boroughs, and grant extensive charters of liberties. They could confiscate the estates of traitors and felons, and regrant these at will. They could establish and preside over their own petty parliaments and county courts. Finally, they could claim any and every feudal due, aid, grant, and relief" (Nelson 1966, ch. 8), although they did not mint coins. Their one insecurity, if they did not take up arms against the king, was of dying without a legitimate heir, whereupon the title reverted to the Crown in escheat. Welsh law was frequently used in the Marches in preference to English law, and there would sometimes be a dispute as to which code should be used to decide a particular case.” The complete article can be read HERE.

My family appears to have been an offshoot of the Marshal family through an attempt to bring peace with the Welsh nobility by exchanging daughters in marriage the records for which seem to have disappeared in the mists of time. However, in legend an illegitimate son of the Welsh Prince Llewelyn who was helping his father fight the English seems to have been involved in building Blackthorn Castle.

Expressing/evacuating the dome for dive-sex: During the several days interval between the Autumnal Equinox and the total lunar eclipse of the Harvest moon I had the first real opportunity to work with Bryony and Claire and Ashley on their use of a latex flat spring diaphragm for upper reproductive tract protection (flood insurance) to minimize the likelihood of PID not for contraception as they both have stringless GyneFix copper IUDs implanted. Ashley is Jack, Viscount Sandbach’s fiancée, a RB ballerina from a noble family. She was newly preggers at Christmas 2014, but had a miscarriage at 12 weeks while she was still dancing. She was unfamiliar with ballet-sex as well as dive-sex so I’m teaching her along with the Dryads when she is available. The basics are rather simple; it’s just that becoming accustomed to sex while in scuba gear or on pointe being entered from behind with all our muscles clenched can take some getting used to.

Expressing the dome of a flat spring latex diaphragm prior to entering the water for dive-sex will increase the strength of the seal and remove almost all the remaining air in the dome so that stretching the thin highly elastic membrane over the cervix and glans when a partner thrusts in to the anterior fornix doesn’t force air into the uterus. Expressing is quickly and easily done: 1) Insert the diaphragm as usual making certain that it is correctly positioned. 2) Then squat and push down as though having a BM which will push the cervix closer to the entrance to the vagina where the wearer can easily get her fingers into her anterior fornix. 3) Insert two fingers and push the dome into the anterior fornix and all the way to the bottom. You should feel upward pressure on the crevice from the dome stretched tightly over the cervix and the fingers all the way to the bottom of the anterior fornix. If the diaphragm is sealing well the strong vacuum of the seal will cause the dome to cling to the cervix. The same steps can be used to express the air from a silicone diaphragm. However, the domes of silicone diaphragms are not nearly as elastic and so can’t be expressed as completely.

Stud service in the cistern: I pressed Jack, Viscount Sandbach, into service to help partner the Dryads (Bryony and Claire) during dive-sex. It wasn’t difficult to get him interested since Ashley was menstrual and not feeling well and Jack needed an outlet for his sexual needs. So I had him help Nikolai with Bryony and Claire’s dive-sex training in the cistern beneath the undercroft of Crag Abbey. It was only the second time the Dryads had scuba-sex and they felt far more confident that air or water wouldn’t be forced into their uteri since I showed them how to express the air and increase the strength of the seal.