Long Family Archive: Westcott to Plantagenet Link Breakdown (Pass 6)

2026-05-30. The basement already labels the entire pre-1592 Westcott to Plantagenet chain "Traditional, Disputed" in aggregate, citing ten sources on the load-bearing colonial splice. This pass breaks the chain down link by link: which specific parent-child or marriage links are documented, which fail, why each one fails, and what evidence would be needed to validate it. Read-only research; findings applied as a "Where this chain breaks" subsection in the basement. No genealogical content deleted; no tier changed. Methodology principle (per 00-audit-report.md): lead with what was found, not what was hoped for.

The chain audited

As presented in the basement (PlantagenetDescentPage, "Devon to the Plantagenet Court" table), the chain runs, reading upward from the documented immigrant anchor:

• Stukely Westcott (b. 1592) [documented immigrant anchor, Verified]
• Mary Stukley (b. 1563) [his mother, of Marwood/West Worlington, Devon]
• Margaret Arscote (b. ~1548) [married Rev. Lewis Stukely]
• Mary Anne Monck (b. ~1530, d. 1603) [of Dunsland, Devon]
• Lady Frances Plantagenet (b. 1519, d. 1568) [daughter of Arthur Plantagenet]
• Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle (b. ~1462/1480, d. 1542) [acknowledged illegitimate son of Edward IV]
• King Edward IV and the upward Plantagenet royal line

Methodology

Same standard as the deep edge-sourcing pass (04-edge-sourcing.md) and the Coffin medieval audit (05-coffin-medieval-audit.md): a link is documented only on a retrieved source that states the relationship, attributed to a named published work; bulk-OCR scanned books are not cited line by line; uncited tree compilations do not count; exact-date matching guards against wrong-ancestor traps. Each link is then tested against the documented dates: a child cannot be born before a parent, and a Monck child of Frances Plantagenet cannot predate her marriage into the Monck family.

Sources consulted (this pass)

• Vivian, J. L. The Visitations of the County of Devon (1895), the "Stucley of Affeton" and "Arscott of Dunsland" pedigrees. Margery Arscott, daughter of Mary (Monck) and John Arscott of Dunsland, baptised 17 January 1578/9 at Bradford, wife of Rev. Lewis Stukeley of Affeton (a Clerk in Holy Orders). Vivian's Stucley and Arscott pedigrees record no children of the Lewis Stukeley to Margery Arscott marriage. (Confirmed via WikiTree and Geni transcriptions that cite Vivian by page, "Stucley" around p. 721; not OCR verified line by line this pass.)
• Wikipedia, "Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle." Frances Plantagenet, daughter of Arthur by his first wife Elizabeth Grey, married first her step-brother John Basset (1520-1541) of Umberleigh in 1538, and second Thomas Monke (c. 1515 to c. 1583) of Potheridge, Devon in 1542. Her great-grandson by the Monke marriage was George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle (1608-1670).
• WikiTree, Frances (Plantagenet) Monck (Plantagenet-43). Children, with dates: Arthur Basset (1540), Katherine Monck (1541), Anthony Monck (1542), Margaret Monke (1542), John Monke (1543), Mary (Monck) Arscott (1544), Francis Monck (1545). No daughter born about 1530; the eldest child is 1540, two years after the 1538 first marriage.
• WikiTree, Demaris (Stukely) Westcott (Stukely-11), quoting Vivian. Rev. Lewis Stukeley married Margery Arscott, "baptised on 17 Jan 1579 at Bradford in Devon, so her marriage and the birth of any children would have been after 1595," and "neither the Stucley nor the Arscott pedigrees in Vivian mention any children" of the pairing.
• Whitman, Roscoe L. History and Genealogy of the Ancestors and Some Descendants of Stukely Westcott (1932) (familyfindings transcription): "Beyond the year of his birth, 1592, nothing has been positively revealed of the youth of Stukely Westcott," and the descent from the Westcote line stated as "there is every belief," not as documented fact.
• The ten-source dispute already catalogued in DisputeCitations.tsx: Bullock (1886), Whitman (1932 to 1939), Trismen (1964), The American Genealogist (1969), WikiTree Westcott-138 (parents detached), Cochoit's WikiTree G2G analysis (2018), Yeovil's Virtual Museum, the Howder compilation, Wikipedia, and the absence from Richardson, Roberts, Faris, and Weis.
• Richardson, Royal Ancestry / Plantagenet Ancestry; Roberts, 900 Immigrants; Faris; Weis. Stukely Westcott appears in none (per 00-audit-report.md). The Plantagenet-Monck line itself is real published peerage material (it produced the Duke of Albemarle), but no accepted compilation carries it to a colonial immigrant through the Westcott splice.

Per-link findings

The chain does not fail uniformly. The top three links are documented. The break is at the colonial end, and the middle Devon links are real but mis-dated by decades.

What evidence would validate each broken or mis-dated link

• Frances to Mary Monck: nothing further is needed for the link itself; the basement need only correct the date to 1544 and the identity to Mary (Monck) Arscott, Frances's documented daughter by Thomas Monke.
• Mary Monck to Margery Arscott: documented in Vivian; correct the date to 1578/9 and the name to Margery.
• Margery Arscott to Mary Stukley: a parish baptism naming a daughter Mary of Lewis Stukeley and Margery Arscott, born after about 1595. None appears in Vivian, and such a record would itself break the line to Stukely Westcott (b. 1592), who is older than the proposed grandmother's marriage.
• Mary Stukley to Stukely Westcott: a baptism or parish record at Marwood, West Worlington, or Ilminster naming Stukely Westcott as the son of Guy Westcott and Mary Stukley, born 1592. None has surfaced in 140 years of search (Bullock 1886, The American Genealogist 1969, Cochoit 2018).

The structural finding

The chain does not break at the royal end. Edward IV to Arthur Plantagenet to Lady Frances Plantagenet is documented, and it is the same Plantagenet-Monck line that produced George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle, through Frances's son Anthony Monck (b. 1542). A genuine Devon descent from Frances also exists: Frances to Mary (Monck) Arscott (1544) to Margery Arscott (1578/9) to the marriage with Rev. Lewis Stukeley (after about 1595).

The break is at the colonial end, and it is twofold:

1. Compression. The site collapses four real Devon generations, documented at 1519, 1544, 1578/9, and post-1595, into impossible dates (1519, ~1530, ~1548, 1563) that make each "child" older than the record allows and, at two links, older than the parent.
2. The undocumented splice. Below the mis-dated Devon links, the connection from Mary Stukley to her supposed son Stukely Westcott (b. 1592) has no documented child and is chronologically impossible (Stukely is older than the marriage of his proposed grandmother). This is the load-bearing edge the ten-source dispute has flagged since 1886.

Tier impact

No tier change. The pre-1592 chain remains Traditional, Disputed. This pass documents why it is disputed, link by link, so the basement is self-explanatory rather than relying on an aggregate label.

Outward-facing alignment (applied 2026-05-30)

• /lines/westcott corrected. WestcottPage previously stated as fact: "His mother, Mary Stukley of the Devon gentry family seated at West Worlington, gave him the given name that was in fact her own maiden surname," presenting the disputed splice (Mary Stukley as Stukely's mother) as documented. It is now reframed to family tradition with a link to the basement breakdown (/basement#where-this-chain-breaks): the maternal link is named as the contested colonial splice (no recorded child of the Stukeley-Arscott marriage in Vivian; the Mary Stukley to Stukely Westcott connection undocumented and chronologically problematic), with the maternal-surname custom kept as the traditional explanation for the given name. The page now aligns with the basement's epistemic posture.