Can you be just a Yeoman with a royal ancestry?

My father used to like to say that it took an Act of Congress to make him an officer AND a gentleman. I think that there were two points being made. The first was about manners and the second was about station in life.

A gentleman in England once meant someone above a yeoman (small land holder or freeman attached to a noble) and below an esquire. A gentleman was the lowest of the gentry and often the youngest son of the youngest son of a peer. They were typically well educated for their time and sufficiently well-heeled to be able to live off the rents of their lands.

My father could not be called a gentleman on those terms. For generations, he and his forebears would have been yeomen in the Jeffersonian sense. Yet, eventually, even the land holdings disappeared. It was the education gained through the GI Bill that gave the leg up in the world to my father's generation and my own. I suspect this will be true for my nephews as well. Most of us will have served in the armed forces and, having served, will have gained a greater purchase on life.

Well, I guess that is not too far off of how the knights of old gained their wealth through war.

But, here is the irony; while my father would not fit the definition of a gentleman beyond the requisite Act of Congress, he does appear to have a royal ancestry. At this point, I have images of John Goodman in King Ralph floating through my imagination. Nothing that close; sorry. But, something very interesting nonetheless.

In fact, if I have gotten this right, and of that I am fairly certain, then, one of the lines back through my dad goes all the way back to Edward I and further. But, just as interesting, perhaps even more interesting, it goes back to a key figure in the Plymouth Colony. Well, Scituate actually. I am referring to Major (General) James Cudworth who was one of the two executors of the will of Captain Miles (Myles) Standish.

So, if you are a Hayes from Michigan whose ancestry goes back to Emmaretta C. Peper nee Bates in Buckley, then you are in for a treat.