Person:William De Strode (1)

William de Strode left his home in Parnham to marry Alice de Ledred of Somerton, in the adjacent county of Somerset, about 1443. They reared a family of four sons and a daughter there. Somerset would continue to be the home shire of six more generations of the Strodes.

The east-central section of the county where they lived was a good agricultural area, with much grain being grown and exported from ports in Bridgewater Bay on the Bristol Channel. To the west of them lay the wild moorlands of Exmoor and to the north the Mendip Hills where quarries produced the warm-hued stone from which the beautiful buildings in Bath were constructed.

The Strodes were to see continuing turbulent times for their country during their lifetimes. William was a youngster of about ten years when the War with France took a favorable turn and the English monarch Edward VI was crowned king of France. It followed the capture in 1431 of the French heroine Joan of Arc by Burgundian allies of the English, following which she was tried as a witch and burned at the stake in Rouen. But, by 1453, fortunes were reversed and the English were swept completely out of France to end the war. The interruption in commerce over such a protracted period and the continuing cost of conducting the war had reduced the English economy to shambles and left its people exhausted both emotionally and financially.

No sooner had this conflict been left behind than England was subjected to wrenching civil strife between 1455 and 1485 as the royal houses of York and Lancaster fought for the throne. It was known as the Wars of the Roses, so named for the symbols adopted by each side -- a white rose for York and a red rose for Lancaster. After the crown changed hands several times -- two kings were killed in battle and two murdered in the Tower of London -- the wars ended when an arranged marriage united the contesting sides.

The royal battles obviously had no effect on the longevity of the Strodes. William de Strode died in Somerton in 1499 at age 79; Alice lived on until May of 1514, reaching a most usual age for those times of 89 years. (Taken from: A Family History, by Donovan Faust)

1. ↑ A. Donovan Faust (Foust). A Family History: The Ancestors of Thomas Wilson Faust. (1997).