Acknowledgements:

  This is a family origin story – namely, my family.  It is the story of four powerful families in England, how they came to power, how they merged during Elizabethan times, then tested the ties that bind just a generation later during the English Civil War.

  It is written as an historical fiction.  That is to say I have put words into the mouths of historical figures, and feel I have the right to do so as most are my own great-grandfathers, great-grandmothers, aunties and uncles.  In fact, there is a Wikipedia Page on nearly all of the main characters.

  Few historians had the resources to research their subject as we have in this new information age.  Wikipedia was just the beginning of my prospecting.  The sheer volume of data available at the click of a mouse, or spoken command to some soothing yet disembodied voice in a box is staggering. 

  That said, much of the research on my illustrious family began when I discovered two comprehensive volumes at the Newberry Library near my home in Chicago.  With heavy pages and embossed leather covers, these tomes were penned over a century ago by a family member, Compton Reade.  Specifically, he was my sixth cousin, fifth generation removed.

  The first of these encyclopedic books was aptly named A RECORD OF THE REDES OF BARTON COURT, BERKS., published in 1899 by Jakeman and Carver, High Town, Hereford.  Ten years later the second volume, THE HOUSE OF CORNEWALL, was co-written by Compton Reade and another relative, Cecil George Savile, the 4th Earl of Liverpool and Lord Steward of His Majesty’s Household, and published by the same Jakeman and Carver.  Compton Reade also credits an American Diplomat with help in his research, General J. Meredith Reade of Pennsylvania, who served among other posts as the official liaison to Greece in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

  There are many other books written before the Great War with spectacular attention to detail, stripped of the political posture and white wash I find in most historical records bound in the twentieth century, far too many to mention here but properly cited and credited in my own encyclopedic compilation, ANCESTRAL NOTES AND HISTORIES, set for publication at a later date.

  Again, without the fine work of Compton Reade I could not have begun such a task.

Duke Pierce Reade

Notes:

Coming Soon... Volume II

ANCESTRAL NOTES AND HISTORIES

Relevant and Companion to

THE RED AND THE GOLD

Including Maps, Wills, and Ancestral Charts of the

Reade, Cornewall, Brockett, and Hoo Lines

with Heraldry Both Paternal and Maternal

and a Treatise on the Saxon Neville Connection

by

Duke Pierce Reade