Preface In 1980, at the start of my investigations into family history, I wrote an exploratory letter to the official head of the Skeffington family, the 13th Viscount Massereene. In his reply of 28 February 1980 from Chilham Castle (Kent), the late John Skeffington [1914-1992] said: The Skeffingtons came over with William I from Normandy and were granted land in Leicestershire at Skeffington where many of my early ancestors are buried. The village was wiped out in the Black Death (plague). The name Skeffington is reputed to mean Sheeptown. The mansion (Skeffington) is still standing, but the estate passed out of the hands of my family [at the] end of the 19th century. The Skeffington[s] were knights for many centuries and played a considerable part in the affairs of the kingdom. In the 16th century, Sir William Skeffington became the first governor of Ireland for the British Crown. Sir John Skeffington married the only daughter (no other children) of the first Viscount Massereene and, by special patent of Charles II, succeeded his father-in-law as second viscount. The first Lord Massereene was very active in promoting the restoration of Charles II. He was in fact the first peer to be created by this monarch. Massereene is Irish Gaelic and means “king or queen of the hills”.
The letter ended in the following friendly manner: If you are coming to England this summer and give me plenty of warning, I should be happy to show you literature on the Skeffingtons. I think there is no doubt that you must have some connection with the name.
At the time, I had no reason to doubt the veracity of Lord Massereene's explanations. So, I imagined that I would soon learn the exact identity of the viscount's ancestors who "came over with William I from Normandy". On the other hand, I had no clear idea of how I might go about searching for possible links between the viscount's noble bloodline and my own humble Skyvington branch. The middle part of the lord's letter, in which he evoked his possible genetic cousins, was somewhat disparaging: I think the spelling of your name is probably the result of a transcription error. There are, of course, other Skeffingtons besides myself. Some of these have double-barrelled names such as Skeffington-Smythe or Skeffington-Lodge. This is usually because their ancestors have been in the service of my family, and the Lord Massereene of the day has been godfather to their children and the name Skeffington has been added to their original name. Others have been illegitimate children. There was a noted Irish rebel, Sheehy Skeffington. Then you have Skeffington’s Church Times newspaper and Skeffington’s sweet shops in Ireland. Quite a varied bag! Preface
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Today, over three decades later, my research in the Skeffington domain has advanced considerably, and the existence of the present one-name study suggests that I have a fair amount of significant information to present. On the other hand, there are two major questions to which I have not yet found satisfactory answers: • The identity of the patriarch of the Skeffingtons in England remains a mystery. William conquered England in 1066, and the Skeffington village in Leicestershire was mentioned for the first time in the Domesday Survey, two decades later. However it was not until a century after the Norman conquest that we come upon the first reference to an inhabitant of the village—Geoffrey de Sceftington—who seems to have used the placename as a kind of personal surname. I have never found any evidence enabling us to conclude that the biological ancestors of this Geoffrey were companions of the Conqueror. Indeed, for all we know, the forefathers of Geoffrey de Sceftington may have even been Saxon folk attached to this settlement. In other words, the French-sounding name of this primeval Skeffington individual is no guarantee that he was indeed of Norman origins. • The second big problem that I have not been able to solve concerns the precise origins of the many present-day families—in Ireland, Britain and the New World—who write their surname as "Skeffington". It is all very well to refer to them (as Massereene did) as "quite a varied bag", but it would be nice to know more about the circumstances in which such families appeared on the scene: that is, the approximate place and time. Then there is the fundamental question of whether such people are biological descendants of Skeffington ancestors, or merely nominal relatives. Readers might be surprised by the two weaknesses of this one-name study to which I have just drawn attention. On the one hand, I cannot describe the exact beginnings of the Skeffington story in the British Isles. On the other hand, I have just admitted that I cannot even indicate explicitly the likely background of present-day Skeffingtons! What is left for me to talk about? Well, there is all the rest: namely the known history of the various branches of this ancient Anglo-Irish family, extending over some nine centuries.
Structure of this document My monography is composed of ten chapters, which I shall now summarize.
1.
Elusive patrarch xxx
2.
Primeval Skeffingtons xxx xxx
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3.
Tudor lords xxx
4.
Mainstream Skeffingtons xxx
5.
Massereene dynasty xxx
6.
Kent Skeffingtons xxx
7.
Bedfordshire Skevingtons xxx
8.
East Midlands Skevingtons xxx
9.
Dorset Skivingtons xxx
10. Recent evolutions xxx xxx
What next? Many readers with surnames related to Skeffington might be disappointed to discover that there are no explicit references, in the present monography, to their own known or imagined forebears. This is inevitable, for two obvious reasons. First, Skeffington descendants—maybe with surnames such as Skevington, Skivington, Skyvington, etc—are quite numerous today, and scattered throughout the planet, and it would have been unthinkable to deal specifically with all of them (or even most of them) in a short document such as this one-name study. Second, I must say that, whenever I have avoided the analysis of such-and-such a major domain (in particular, present-day Skeffington families in Ireland and the New World), this generally means that I was incapable of gathering together and summarizing the relevant data. But I am hoping that readers in such "forgotten" categories will be able to use the present document as a stepping-stone in their own personal genealogical research. Preface
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Genetic approach Finally, there is an interesting new tool in genealogy that I wish to mention here: DNA testing. I became intrigued by this genetic approach several years ago, and I immediately obtained (from the Family Tree DNA company) my values of 67 Y-chromosome markers.
Since then, I have often attempted to persuade other males in the Skeffington domain to obtain similar data, but my DNA evangelism has not yet borne fruit. One of these days, in the near future, I believe that most genealogical researchers will discover the possibilities of the DNA approach, and this should make it possible to clarify certain relationships between various branches of the Skeffington-based family.
William Skyvington Gamone, Choranche (France) July 2012
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