I commenced this website about 2018 as a place for my research notes into the ancestry and heritage of Daniel Dering Mathew, ancestor of my husband David Christian. Daniel Dering Mathew had aristocratic ancestors on his Dering, Byam and Mathew lines.
Rather than approaching this with monarchist aims, instead, I undertook this project as an academic exercise. My intention was to discover how far back I could trace the ancestral lines of Daniel Dering Mathew, and also locate his ancestors’ stories. 
I was to find that these ancestral lines went much further back than I anticipated, possibly as far back as the 4th Century, and also extended across much of Europe.
Daniel Dering Mathew himself was an “interesting man”, but not a “good man” – not evil, but definitely not nice. There is a tendency to “cancel” undesirable people and things in the 21st Century, and to focus only on the “good”. Probably many of us also have “black sheep in the family tree” along with “skeletons in the family cupboard”. Daniel Dering Mathew had plenty of “black sheep” and “skeletons”, however his ancestors did live in bloody times. There were also generations involved in Slavery in the Mathew and Byam lines. Daniel Dering Mathew also had many many notable ancestors, including Alfred the Great, William the Conqueror and Charlemagne.
Above and below – Charlemagne outside Notre Dame Paris France 2018
Because of the complexity of Daniel Dering Mathew’s ancestry going back over nearly a millennia and a half, I created this web site with a modular format, which could be expanded or contracted, as can be seen from the top menu.
- Dering line
- Byam line
- Mathew line
- Knollys – Carey – Boleyn lines
- Neville – Brent line
- Twisden – Royden – Lancaster – FitzRoger Lines
- Roman Era Ends – focus on Roman Gaul
- Medieval Era – this covers many European countries and so includes a number of sub-sections
- Tudor – Stuart Times – English and Scottish
- Georgian Era
- Victorian – Windsor Eras
There have also been a number of blog posts exploring:
- DNA connections – 1, 2, 3
- de Bohun lines
- FitzAlan Arundel lines
- Marshal lines
William Marshall I & William Marshall II Tombs, The Temple Church of the Templars, London 2019
- Mathew Gambier connections – Gambier Huguenot Family
- More/Roper lines
Sir Thomas More outside the Old Chelsea Church London 2019
- Saints in the Dering Byam Mathew Family Tree
After five years, while a great deal of research has been undertaken since 2018, there is still much more research to undertake.
Travelling
Rollo The Viking First Duke of Normandy – Alesund, Norway 2019
An unexpected bonus was to find connections in Daniel Dering Mathews’ ancestral places with our European travels from 1981/1982, viz
- 1981/1982 – England, Netherlands, France, Spain, Austria, Italy and Yugoslavia
- 1987 – England, Scotland and Wales
- 1990 – Germany
- 2010 – Italy, former Balkan States
- 2014 – Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark
- 2015 – Hungary, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Czechia, Netherlands
- 2016 – Italy, Spain
- 2018 – France, Belgium
- 2019 – Norway, Spain, Malta, Italy, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland
Unfortunately the Covid-19 Pandemic aborted our plans to travel in France, Spain and Portugal in 2020. Subsequently in 2023 we plan to travel to Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland.
Thus researching Daniel Dering Mathew’s ancestry, combined with our travels, and various historical presentations to our local U3A’s, have all provided us with a different “lens” with which to view global history.
Daniel Dering Mathew - A Family History 