41 ordinances were shared with the temple system in February. All the ordinances were from the downlines of Samuel Farr son of our Stephen Farr Sr. I have been able to add a large number of people to this downline that don't qualify for ordinances because of the date restrictions.

In firming up our itinerary with Steve Farr in Belgium, he asked why I wanted to go to the Luton Museum and Dunstable Priory. I told him about the Register of The Fraternity of St. John The Baptist that is available at the Luton Museum (known now as the Wardown Park Museum) and that it had listed in it John Fayrey the cousin of our last proven ancestor John Fayre. Steve has been trying to take a few things off our itinerary to make the trip a little more relaxed so he called the Wardown Museum and found out that they had an interactive digital copy that they use in the Museum. Steve put me in contact with the person over the register and he sent me the interactive program of the register! 

While going through the 27 pages of this ancient register, I found not only the name of John Fayre merchant and stapler, cousin of our John Fayre, joining the fraternity in 1522 but also found the name of Rychard ffarre, the brother of our John Fayre, joining in 1533. Rychard ffarre and his wife Agnes and his son John rented Woburn Abbey for 40 years and would have to have been well to do in order to do this. We know that John Fayre/Fayrey Merchant and Stapler of Calais was well to do but it appears now that his cousin Rychard Farre was also. 

When I got to page 23 of the register, I was shocked to see the name of "Sir William Buckley Preste" (Priest). Considering the date of abt 1538/9 and the fact that he was a priest, it could be William Bulkeley the great grandfather of our Frances Bulkley and her brother Rev. Peter Bulkeley of Concord, MA. Frances and Peter Bulkeley's father was the Rev. Edward Bulkeley of Odell, Bedfordshire! Not all of the members of the fraternity were from Bedfordshire, many were from other areas like Lincoln, Surrey etc. I will have to do more research to pin the William Buckley in the register as our direct ancestor, but right now it looks very suspect.

powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries. Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".
The American Bar Association erected a monument in Runnymede, England to commemorate the Magna Carta. Near the Magna Carta monument is a monument to Pres. John F. Kennedy.

​The following is a list of the Magna Charta Sureties. All of them were barons under King John. Of the twenty five barons, we descend from twelve of them (marked with "*") and from the father of another (marked with "**").

• ustace de Vesci
• Robert de Ros*
• Richard de Percy
• William de Mowbray*
• Roger de Montbegon
• John FitzRobert
• William de Forz
• John de Lacy*
• Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester*
• Richard de Montfichet
• William de Huntingfield
• Roger Bigod* and Hugh Bigod*
• Robert de Vere*
• Geoffrey de Mandeville
• Henry de Bohun*
• Richard de Clare* and Gilbert de Clare*
• William D'Albini
• Robert Fitzwalter*
• William Hardel
• William de Lanvallei
• William Malet*
• William Marshall II**
• Geoffrey de Say

From the outset, the opposition barons had been aware of the danger that, once King John had left Runnymede, he would renege on the Charter on the grounds that it constituted an illegitimate infringement of his authority.  The barons came up with a novel solution to the problem in the famous clause 61, the security clause.   In this, King John conceded that ‘the barons shall choose any twenty-five barons of the realm as they wish, who with all their might are to observe, maintain and cause to be observed the peace and liberties which we have granted’. Any infringement of the charter’s terms by the king or his officials was to be notified to any four of the committee; and, if within forty days no remedy or redress had been offered, then the king was to empower the full committee to ‘distrain and distress us in every way they can, namely by seizing castles, lands and possessions’ until he made amends.  In this remarkable clause, then, the charter introduced the novelty of obliging the king to sanction and institute armed action against none other than himself.  The means by which they sought to achieve this was use of the common law doctrine of distraint, the means by which debts were collected from debtors and malefactors obliged to answer for their actions in court.
Since the clause anticipated the election of the twenty-five at some time in the future, their names are not actually listed in the charter.   Consequently, the committee’s composition is known principally from the list given later in his chronicle by Matthew Paris, the celebrated chronicler of St Albans Abbey (Herts.).  
It is noteworthy that these men were all layfolk, and for the most part members of the hard-line baronial opposition to the king.  No bishop or other Churchman appears, not even, for example, Giles de Braose, bishop of Hereford, who had long been hostile to John.  The committee was seen in clear terms as a committee of enforcers, a group whose main responsibilities were to be of a military nature.
Why did the barons alight on the number twenty-five in particular?  One very obvious reason, it being an odd number, was to avoid split voting.  More mystically, however, the number twenty-five was highly significant in the Bible.  It was, for example, the age from which God instructed Moses to permit the Levites to be consecrated to God’s service and the age from which many of the kings of Judea had come to the throne; while it also represented ‘the law squared’ in the sense that there are five books to the Pentateuch and, in the New Testament, five loaves for feeding the five thousand.  These legitimising links from the Bible were of great importance in the Middle Ages.
At a more prosaic level, it is worth remembering that the court of aldermen of the city of London, which is known to have been in existence by 1200, was made up of twenty-five members.  It may have been from the number of this body that the barons drew their most immediate inspiration.

I submitted 89 ordinances to the temple system in December. I'm still working on the descendants of Samuel Farr and am currently working on the descendants of his grandson, Charles Farr. It has been difficult working on Charles' Family because FamilySearch had his sons Caleb and Calvin combined. His son Charles Jr. was confused with him and their spouses. I hope I didn't mess anything up on FS trying to seperate and combine those in this Family but I think I'm on the right track. Unfortunately part of this family goes into the New York black hole of genealogy.

I have also attached two charts from Olive Hovey Freeman out to William Marshall and one to Robert Ros. Both William De Marshall and Robert De Ross were members of the Knights Templar and are both buried in the Temple Church in London. Effigies of William Marshall, his son William and Robert Ros are in the Temple Church. Another effigy of William Marshall is found in the House of Commons in Parliament. William Marshall was one of the forces behind the Magna Carta and his son is listed in the second paragraph.

Author Thomas Asbridge has published a book titled "The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones" which is a very good read! The book not only paints a vivid picture of the life of our direct ancestor, but also paints a very good picture of how the medieval feudal system worked and the life of being a knight as opposed to how television portrays it.

It was interesting to find that William Marshall's daughter Sibilla married William De Ferrers, 7th Earl of Derby(5th Earl by some), the very line that we have been trying to find a connection to with our direct Farr line! I did a little more searching and found a connection to the Ferrers' line form Olive Hovey Freeman which I will send next month.

Lisa and I will be visiting the Temple Church in London in early May.
http://www.templechurch.com/