FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES
Star uncovers ancestor’s role in royal scandal involving Hammer of Scots
FRIENDS star Courteney Cox has discovered how one of her ancestors played a key part in a royal scandal.
The 52-year-old US actress traced her family line back seven centuries and found it included British nobles.
And it emerged her ancestor Thomas de Berkeley was involved in keeping Hammer of the Scots King Edward I’s father King Henry III in captivity.
Making the discovery on the American version of Who Do You Think You Are?, Cox said: “My 18 times great-grandfather is holding the king’s father prisoner. Well, this is getting juicy.”
Thomas de Berkeley was one of Edward I’s top soldiers. He fought in the Battle of Falkirk in 1298 and the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, where he was captured by the Scots.
Cox visited Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where the first Baron of Berkeley lived in the Middle Ages.
In the show, she and a team of researchers uncovered documents that reveal he was responsible for looking after Henry III. The actress asked about a letter she was told the baron sent to Edward saying his dad had died. Yet according to a 700-year-old financial account, he was still alive.
Cox said: “I’m confused. Why isn’t the king’s father the king if he’s still alive?”
In another manuscript from the 14th century, detailing items purchased, she learned the king’s father was living in a chamber.
Reading a translation, she said: “‘For the bolts, rods and other ironwork bought for the chamber of the father of the king.’ Was that like a prison?” “He’s being kept prisoner by his son?” When it was confirmed Henry III was being held prisoner by her ancestor, she added: “We’re talking someone in my family killed the King of England?
“Powerful little family we got there.”