Danny's come to meet expert genealogist laura berry who's agreed to work on his
family tree to see if she can help him solve the French mystery so Laura my
four-times great-grandfather Charles but Ervin I was led to believe was French
well I have done a bit of research as you can see from this family tree here
okay and you're at the bottom I know we've got your
four-times-great-grandfather but fun is here I've managed to go back a little
bit further but I'm afraid I haven't been able to find any French ancestry in
these immediate generations here although I have managed to find
something quite interesting going back through Charles's mother and Gosnold who
came from a really prominent Suffolk family and if you work up the tree to
Robert Gosnold who is your 10-times great-grandfather seven times great I
love this this is 10-times great-grandfather Robert Gosnold Wow
and he was born in 1611 and died in 1658 and actually on his baptism records
dating from 1611 it was written in latin and it is quite difficult to read but
there's anyone that it's alright but he it does say that his father robert
Gosnold was an armature and i don't know if that phrase means anything to you i
wish i was intelligent enough to say yes but no it doesn't it means no i don't
know that means what does it mean well it's interesting because it suggests
that he was part of the landed gentry and that he had a coat of arms we've got
a picture of it here Wow finally some money in my family
something led to believe there was money in the family and it's been a complete
opposite so far same it was
17th century so Roberts me man okay I'm open his cake I baked huh
and that in Kotka nice woman he's really rich oh yeah caked that would be quite
excited I need to find out more about this crazy than I well Ivan is a proper
gays a lot proper well it's interesting about your 10 times great-grandfather's
dates you know he was alive in the 1640s and 1650s who would have been an adult
during the English Civil War and the landed gentry did tend to play quite
prominent roles in the English Civil War so I think he would be a really
interesting person to investigate a bit further about Gosnold sounds posh
so I'm very excited Robert Gosnold possibly could have fought in the
English Civil War and and and it's exciting because you know I want a real
man on what I want I want a bit of Earth when a leader of man in my life I need
some good news because I've had some pretty heavy stuff up until this point
Danny has traveled to Oxford to meet professor marks toil a Civil War
historian I know this is a very old pub the oldest pub in Oxford but what while
we're well I'm Oxford at this time is absolutely rammed with people so there
are you know the normal towns folk and there are also thousands of soldiers
here so we can be quite certain this pub would have had soldiers billeted in it I
know a certain amount about Robert Gosnell Adam he was in the English Civil
War was he himself might even have popped into this pub he would certainly
obscene to this pose he was in here yeah I love that so this is the kind of you
know ambient gives me a little shiver up the spine does so think that you know
you know you could be not gonna bat a nail
Danny's ancestor Colonel Robert Gosnold fought in the
bloody English Civil War which began in 1642 and saw nearly 200,000 people lose
their lives supporters of King Charles the first the
Royalists were pitted against the parliamentarians after a number of
defeats the king's army were on the run and finally retreated to oxford in 1646
by this stage only the most loyal troops were still standing by Charles the first
and Robert Gosnold was among them and the fact that he's decided to put
himself into Oxford and defend the King's capital even when things are
going so badly for Charles shows that he's sort of an uber royalist an uber
Cavalier if you like well I'm not really a loyalist yeah none of my family are
really I don't know why I'm not a voice right now I want to be a royalist for
some reason I feel that I should be this is an image of Oxford as it was at the
time it shows you the incredible earthworks that the Royalists had built
around it and this fortress was about to be attacked by the strongest army in the
British Isles outnumbered completely these are the parliamentarian troops
hello colonel yeah just waiting to pounce
and Robert is in there somewhere he's probably near yeah I love it I love it I
love it as the parliamentarians advance ever closer the King disguised himself
and escaped Oxford in April 16 46 he was eventually arrested and executed Charles
left behind his loyal troops who were forced to negotiate the final surrender
even at this point when all is clearly lost Robert himself in his sort of close
comrades I'm not too keen to surrender even though there's virtually no hope
left of them they still want to hold out it was gangs you're like yeah he's
taking royalism about as far as it can be taken the loyalty that these men are
showing is incredible really we've definitely got that in our family you
know it's about heart and spirit and that this seems to be a recurring theme
for me yeah you know battling against the odds and still coming out the other
side it's a false mate mmm he's a powerful powerful man and I'm hopelessly
in love with him
so Robert Gosnold is my hero at this point what's a man King Charles the
first obviously had his head chopped off but what happened to Robert you know
what was his fight that's why I'm intrigued about
Danny has come to Robert Gosnell's village oddly in Suffolk to meet local
historian Stephen Potts
staven planning how are you I'm very well pleased me pleasure pleasure
welcome to Otley thank you so Stephen Robert Gosnold watch a man absolutely
fascinated by this character I've learnt a bit about him yeah it's so any more
you can tell me about him well good place to start is to come here
and tautly hall and see exactly where he lived
oh well so this is Robert godknows house you're not ready for this slave and I'm
really not ready for this Wow this is the most beautiful eyes I've
ever seen I mean this is one of the finest grade 1 listed houses in the
whole of the county yeah this is up there his uh his that he's one of his
peacocks so did I bite played cocks by the way don't think so I know that
Robert was a herbalist and I was on the losing side in the war we will know King
Charles of versus fate I don't know weapons Robert was he
imprisoned I mean no they didn't imprison the Royalists but they did
exploit them so they would have taken money from their estates during the
Civil War and they set up a system whereby they could find them because
what they needed more than anything else was money yeah there's lots of
documentation that still exists that shows what happened to him what day is
it this is dated first of September 16:46
so this is just a few months after the war is ended - the Honourable committee
at Goldsmiths hall for compositions with delinquents do you know what that means
no so anybody who was a royalist and supported Charles was a delinquent
okay we've got the transcript there this is more beer
he prays a direction to the committee in the country to pay the arrears of there
is rents and annuities for the time they have received the rents and profits of
his lands that he is indebted 1200 pound Wow that his houses are decayed and
spoiled to the value of 500 pound and his woods cut down and wasted to the
value of a thousand pound fine is 600 pound what we talking to those money
difficult to put it in terms of today's money but we're certainly talking about
the equivalent of several hundred thousand pounds so they're a team for
severe Reddy's as it's a nice London survey ready severe readies yeah a lot
of Phaedrus business would have hurt him tremendously and they knew he come from
wealth so they're very mild in though yep they want the money but he ends up
mortgaging remortgaging and so on and finally after his death his heirs have
no choice but to sell will land on so they basically just lost everything
really because there were Royalists yeah just snatched away from them yeah all
this is beauty son at this point the Gosnell's are no longer landed gentry
they have no land they go down the social scale and no hope of ever getting
back to where they were before I knew it was all too good to be true there's
never really been any money in my family at all you know
don't despair Roberts mother even so you're Colonel Roberts mother yeah was
at all mush there what I told mash and Thomas and the Thomas family are still a
land owning family in fact in the very next village to here
to this day I forgot the next villager and caused some chaos Danny has
discovered that the Gosnell's are related to the tall mash family via his
11 times great-grandmother and tall mesh the mother of Colonel Robert Gosnold
you