User talk:Aislinn09

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templars_List

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bewley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bewley%27s

http://www.shadowedrealm.com/articles/exclusive/richard_saladin_warriors_third_crusade

http://bewleys.com/

http://www.bewleyshotels.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bewley#Bewleys_of_Cumberland

http://www.thomasbewley.com/bewleys-of-cumberland/index.htm

Reasons for this talk page: one of my verifiable ancestors, one William de Beaulieu, is listed as the twenty-second name in the British Templars' list. The name 'de Beaulieu' in Britain is the name of one Sir Thomas de Beaulieu, the person that all of us Bewleys, by blood and name, are descended from. He gained a title in the year 1332 by an Act of the British Parliament. A title that my British cousins still hold, by the way. This is all documented in a book, The Bewleys of Cumberland and their Irish Descendants, by Sir Edmund Thomas Bewley, published in Dublin, Ireland, in 1902. (You can find the whole thing at the following link: http://www.thomasbewley.com/bewleys-of-cumberland/index.htm)

Facts: The very first de Beaulieu I was able to trace was a William de Beaulieux, who, in the eighth century C.E., was "le Roi de Normandie" and "duc d'Aquitaine." [I have a friend who's a native French speaker; she translated all this into English for me. It also took me about thirty seconds to believe her. I freaked.]

It's rather obvious that we dropped the "x" on the end of 'de Beaulieux' when we took Britain during the Norman Conquest.

That also makes him one of the great-grandfathers of Richard the Lionheart and his brothers. Technically, the Plantangenets still exist; they just don't carry the name of "Plantagenet" any longer. I am one. If the idea of the War of the Roses was the genocide of the Plantagenets, then the Tudors lost horrifically: I'm here, typing this. And my family in Britain and Ireland is still here, too. The Tudors seem to have disappeared somehow. But we're still here. We won by default. We're still here, even after the Plantagenets were disenfranchised and their claim to the British throne was taken from them as a consequence of the War of the Roses.

...and since Eleanor, duchess of Aquitaine, took her son Richard home with her, back to Normandy, we're also very responsible for Richard the Lionheart. We raised him. And from what I've read about him, that's simply proof that he really is a relative. He acts a lot like the modern Bewleys. Oh yes, he does. He lacked a sense of personal responsibility, just like most of us. (We all tend to learn 'responsibility' as a concept, not just a word, the hard way.) He was a fervently devout Catholic, just like us. Fanatically devoted to his family, just like us. He was also as smart as the rest of us: he's looked at as a very gifted miltary tactician and strategist, but was so politically stupid that he almost lost his own throne (that of Britain -- he was technically also the KING of Normandy, not just the "duke of"). So typical of a Bewley. I speak from direct knowledge (these people are my own blood family) and my own research into the life and doings of Richard I of Britain and Normandy. That man was my cousin. We're blood relatives separated only by centuries passed and distance. Literally: he died approximately 774 years before I was born...in the United States (the home of United States Nuclear Command -- Offutt-Stratcom --Omaha, Nebraska!) and was raised an Irish-Catholic...but he's still one of my own relatives.

The family de Beaulieu, apparently some very staunch Catholics (one of us, probably more, were Templar Knights), became Bewleys and Anglicans when one of us signed the Oath of Loyalty during the reign of Henry VIII. We were literally under a 'double threat': We were Plantagenets and Catholics. If I remember correctly, Henry VIII liked killing off Catholics and Plantagenets -- he tended to view Catholics as disloyal and Plantagenets as threats to his throne. [He also liked killing off his wives, too.]

A few centuries or so after that, my direct-line great-grandfather, William Peter Bewley, created my branch of the family when he married an Irish-Catholic widow, Anna Mariah Kelley, and apparently became Catholic as well. He was immediately disinherited. The rest of the Bewleys may be Anglican [or some other version of Christian that isn't Roman or Irish Catholic], but we are so un-Anglican it's not even funny -- we're staunch Catholics, and we answer to "Irish-American." We don't even marry any kind of Protestant -- I'm what you'd mistake for a Wiccan, and I'm currently going out with a devout Catholic: he actually, really does go to Mass every Sunday! He can stomach me because I was raised -- you guessed it -- Irish-Catholic. [No, I'm not a Wiccan: our beliefs may be similar, but that's as far as the resemblance goes -- period.] Marrying a Protestant is one of those things that's Simply Not Done. Not if you want to actually have a family that'll talk to you rather than cut you dead afterwards.

So, apologies to all the Muslims who look up to Saleh al-Din, for the mess we made of your lives and your homes. Apologies to every single person and their descendants that was killed by my blood relatives. Apologies to Ireland, especially: I really am an Irish-Catholic Plantagenet American, and it was on our watch that the military occupation of Ireland started.

We managed to survive the Black Death, Henry VII and his son, Henry VIII, and the Great Plague of London, 1664-65. I'm also the descendant of documented Plague survivors. (1357. That's twenty-five years after Sir Thomas de Beaulieu was granted his title.)

Once we became Irish-Catholic, we also became targets. (Check out the history of Ireland, specifically the Irish-Catholic Penal Code and the Great Famine; you'll see what I mean.) One side of my famly (the side that answers to 'British' and 'Anglican') was busy trying to kill the other side (my side, which answers to 'Irish-Catholic'). We were almost wiped out by the famine, but, as usual, we found a way to survive: first we emigrated to Wales, then, a generation later, during the Great Famine, we emigrated to Cleveland, OH, US.

If you look in the book, Wherever Green Is Worn: The Story of the Irish Diaspora, by Tim Pat Coogan, you'll find in the trade paperback edition, on page 51, that one of my Anglo-Irish, then Catholic, cousins (our 'parent' family), Charles Henry Bewley, was a fully accredited ambassador from the Republic of Ireland to Germany during WWII; but before the Americans got involved due to the semi-sneak attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in 1941. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Bewley)

And here I am: one of the last remaining Plantagenets on Earth, an American, living right where I was raised: South Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of an Irish-Catholic American Marine who speaks Irish Gaelic, and a Bewley daughter who also answers to 'Irish-Catholic.'

If you, the reader, has any information you'd like to give me about anyone by the surname of 'de Beaulieux,' 'de Beaulieu' or the version since the early 16th century, 'Bewley,' please do NOT hesitate. I would be extremely grateful. (ESPECIALLY if it's in English!) And forget Charles-Bewley-the-actor: I already know about him, and he not only is the spitting image of my own uncle Jimmy, my daughter also resembles him quite a bit. Same hair, eyes, facial bone structure -- same as my own face. The only differences are that I'm very identifiable as "Black Irish": Black hair; bright, neon-green eyes, set in an extremely Irish-pale face. All that black hair almost makes me look like a vampire, but that's also the color it grows out of my head. And I'm probably as tall as, or taller than, him: I'm six feet, one and half inches tall. If he's really Bewley, he's probably of medium bone size and density, most likely not that tall -- that height issue didn't come in until my grandparents got married -- my grandfather (not a Bewley, unless they're Swedish, too) was the source of the over-six-feet-tall thing. By the way, we don't seem to have any redheads in the family, at least here: only blondes and brunettes. Are there any redheads in the rest of the family? Please let me know.

Thank you so much.

Caithlín de Beaulieux

(This has been my legal name since this 2009; I changed it when I found out exactly where and who I came from. Not too big of a change, however: I just re-spelled my first name, Cathleen, in Gaelic, and took the oldest name in my own bloodline, and it was a loophole in Nebraska state law that gave me the idea. The law specifically states that if you're changing your name to one that was in your family with the idea of bringing it back into usage in your family, then you can have it. The surname 'de Beaulieux' is literally the oldest name in my family, and, due to the reasons why it was Anglicized, I'd rather see this surname alive again rather than 'Bewley': there's already literally thousands of those all over the globe. And they're all relatives; each and every one, whether they want to admit to it or not.)

Aislinn09 (talk) 05:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)