Editing Laurence family

The '''Laurence family''' were English nobility. In the early 19th century, the head of the family held title as the eleventh Earl of Allendale and was addressed as [[Lord Allendale]]. 

==The eleventh earl's family==
The eleventh earl's wife, the Countess of Allendale, was addressed as [[Lady Allendale]]. Their estate was [[Wollaton Hall]] in Nottinghamshire.

Their eldest son and heir, [[George Laurence]], was married. It is not known whether he held a courtesy title such as Viscount. By late 1805 or early 1806, he and his wife Elizabeth had three sons and one daughter (the youngest child). In late 1807 or early 1808, he assumed the duties of his father, who was incapacitated by illness.

Lord and Lady Allendale's second son entered the Church. Their third son, [[William Laurence]], was intended for this profession as well, but ran away to sea and joined the Royal Navy, reaching the rank of Captain in that service before unexpectedly harnessing [[Temeraire]] and transferring to the [[Aerial Corps]].

== Ancestry==
The Earldom of Allendale was created in 1529, during the reign of Henry VIII.

By the end of the eighteenth century, the main branch of the Laurence family was distantly descended from King Edward III of England (1312-1377) via "several contortions and one leap through the Salic line", to the great pride of the eleventh Earl of Allendale.

It is impossible to determine whether the unspecified "contortions" consisted of intermarriages within the family or awkward cases of illegitimacy.

===The Tudor era===
Lord Allendale's Plantagenet-descended ancestors successfully survived the Wars of the Roses and the subsequent purge of any remaining Yorkist heirs. This suggests that by that time, their connection was sufficiently remote to avoid suspicion and that they supported the House of Tudor. 

Irregular descent in itself would not necessarily have saved them from being seen as rival claimants to the throne. The Tudor claim was based on descent through John Beaufort, a grandson of Edward III who was born illegitimately; Beaufort was later legitimized when his parents married, but under terms that should have excluded him and his descendants from the succession.

Henry VIII may have created the Earldom of Allendale to reward the loyalty of a distant cousin. However, it is equally possible that the Plantagenet connection did not occur until after the Earldom was created. The latter speculation partially depends on the interpretation of the phrase "one leap through the Salic line".

==="Leap through the Salic line"===
Technically, a "Salic line" refers to strict male descent. 

If the "leap through" is construed as occurring ''over and in spite of'' this requirement, then that suggests that an otherwise purely agnatic (male-based) line was broken by a single exception, traced through one woman to her sons and grandsons. 

This interpretation leads to several different scenarios for the first earl's identity, his relationship to the heiress, and the Allendale line of succession.

*The heiress was an ancestress of the first earl, who had both Plantagenet blood and the surname of Laurence.
*The heiress brought the Plantagenet blood into the family by marrying the first earl or one of his descendants. Her husband and any previous earls were not of royal descent, but every earl has been surnamed Laurence.
*The heiress was a direct descendant of the first earl and inherited the title of Countess of Allendale in her own right. If her marriage changed the family surname to "Laurence", her father and any previous earls may have been royal descendants with a different surname.
*The heiress was a direct descendant of the first earl and  became Countess of Allendale in her own right, as above, but she and all previous earls lacked both the "Laurence" surname and the Plantagenet blood. Both characteristics came to the earldom through her husband.

The other interpretation would be a single instance where the descent passed ''via'' the Salic line, bypassing potential heiresses and their issue to settle on an otherwise junior male claimant. This does not make sense in the strict context of determining the direct line of descent from Edward III, but it is possible that the family title or estates were entailed and once underwent this type of inheritance.

== Deviations from History ==
There is no history of an English Earldom of Allendale in the real world.

[[Category:British nobility]]