{642} Scott Lineage

The Scott lineage traces back from Long Island, New York to a line of the lesser nobility in Kent, England. They later resided in Canterbury, but maintained a residence at Eggarton (par. Godmersham), and earlier at Scot's Hall (par. Smeeth), and before this in par. Brabourne. There is an argument as early as the end of the sixteenth century that the line comes ultimately from William Baliol le Scot fl. 1296-1313. This man was eventually claimed to be a brother of John Baliol, King of Scotland, which claim does not stand up and fortunately is not everwhere accepted as accurate. After some considerable study it appears that it is possible to establish William as merely a distant kinsman to the king. I display the most probable relationship below. This study has resulted in the construction of a series of four pedigrees laying out:

The reader may be confused by a too frequent disregard for the chronology of the early generations and the speculative nature of a number of conjectures in the work of James Renat Scott in his Memorials of the Family of Scott of Scot’s-Hall, Kent, published by himself in London in 1876. We have attempted a more judicious use of his sources and documentation. Our primary guide to the chronology and generations of Scotts has been the 16th century tomb on the east wall of the church at Brabourne. There on its face is displayed a cascade of heraldic coats of arms with impalements to the Scott’s arms, giving ostensibly the year of each respective union or possibly the subsequent inheritance through the marriage already constituted (ibid., p. 41). Those common to this lineage are as follows:

There are two other impalements representing the next two generations. J. R. Scott claims that the blank impalements suggest that they were unknown. However, something incredible to him appears more likely to us:—the unions were with non-armigerous families.

It is important with Kent pedigrees in general to practice caution with every statement of fact. The evidence is not as clear as the manor records might have suggested to the compilers of these works. They very likely came from counsel with the antiquarian Edward Dering, who has been shown to have forged documents when pressed, cf. Walter Goodwin Davis, Ancestry of Mary Isaac:… (Portland, ME; 1955), p. 100. A couple of connections may well fit into this category:

1. The connection with the Baliol family seems to have little more than the similarity of arms from St, Katherine. This is clearly the opinion of the authors of [17] William's biographical sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography, who wonder at evidence for the Lewknor connection to [18] John.

2. The imposition, as it were, of Michael Scot between [21] William and [20] John. From the chronology, the best I could figure was that Michael inherited the estate of his father, then after some ill-advised military actions which became fatal, his estate fell to a brother. Michael appears on the Scott roll of 1615 visitation of 1619.

3. It seems to us that Joan Lewknor, who had remarried after the War of the Roses during which her husband died, must have honored her husband's wishes in a 1464 agreement whereby the estate on her death without heir would devolve to [18] John. The impalment on the altar-tomb suggests that there was indeed a female heir, Sybel, the (young) wife of [17], stated in about 1615 and 1619 to have been daughter of Thomas Lewknor. Note also that the 1619 visitation (Stowe version) gives the lineage differently from the reconstruction suggested by the documents.

4. Probably the most egregious omission was the conflation of [12] Thomas with [13] Thomas as the father of [11] Dorothy making her the aunt of the same given name and the wife of her husband, naming him as Samuel instead of Daniel Gotherson, cf. JRS, p. 185. The implied documentation is from named heirs of father [12] Thomas in a suit against her. By the law of primogeniture, the first legal heir was her brother, also named Thomas, who died as a teenager. The desparate claimants were her aunts and their husbands, not her sisters.

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Works of Wonder | Ancestral Lines