What Happened to my Nobility?

Technically, a person of royal descent is a person who has an ancestral tie to a past or present monarch. But as the randomly chosen example from my ancestry in the FamilySearch.org Family Tree above shows, you can probably find a royal line in almost any line that extends back into the 1500s. There is commonly some confusion between the terms "nobility" and "royalty." Nobility is a loose term that refers to a class of people with hereditary titles which have been conferred by the monarch. The titles include dukes, duchesses, earls, countesses, barons, baronesses and so forth.

Royals are always considered superior to nobles. Royalty is not something that a person can aspire to. A person has to be born into a royal family. The person shown above, Sir John, Lord High Sheriff Chichester, was part of the nobility and not part of the royalty. So why am I not a member of the English nobility? Well, one reason would be that my family sometime back left England, but the real reason is pretty simple: there is no verified connection between me and this ancestor in the Family Tree.

Sir John's daughter Bridget Chichester is supposed to have married Edmond Prideaux. But unfortunately for any claim I might have to noble ancestry, there are no sources in the Family Tree supporting this marriage. Fortunately, nobility usually married nobility and Edmond Prideaux is pretty well known.

His marriage to Bridget Chichester is well documented. If I keep coming forward in time, I am supposed to be a descendant of Sarah Prideaux, one of their daughters. She supposedly married John Fortescue who is also quite well known whose claim to nobility dates back to a companion of William the Conqueror.  What is next? Well, there are some apparent duplicates in the Family Tree but the next person in my line is supposed to be Simon Fortescue. Somehow, Simon ends up in America with no sources in the Family Tree. Here is the family:

Unfortunately, John Fortescue did not have a son named Simon and especially not one who came to America. Here is a copy of the Fortescue line of descent:

There is no mention of a Simon. In fact, this line actually ends well before this level. With very few exceptions, I usually find that the lineage going back to nobility and royalty has some unsupported links. So much for my claim to nobility.