3.Finding the Family

Whybrow Family Crest

WHYBROW
Whybrow would appear to have as many variants as modern diets, but would appear to have descended from the name Anglo-Saxon Wigburh, meaning  War Fortress. It may refer to a geographical location, or to an ancestress. No one knows. There are Whybrows recorded in Devon and London, but the name is nicely sprinkled over East Anglia, where the Angles, the Saxons and later the Danes settled.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Peterborough Chronicle

The first mention of the name is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 901, as a personal name, and interestingly, in the church rolls in Bury, Suffolk between 1182-1211. There are records of the name in London and Devon, but perhaps they are like the Cambridges, and have been in the area for a long time.

But why this obsession with Anglo-Saxons? Personal peeve. I spent years in the history classroom where I was told how the Normans conquered England and civilised the backward Anglo-Saxons.

Personally, I thought William the Conqueror was of the stuff of which nightmares were made, and totally approved of his servants' behaviour when horrible old monster died in Normandy. They robbed him of everything they could carry, and decamped, leaving him to rot.

William of Normandy(seated)
The Bayeaux Tapestry

In the next post, I shal try to put the Cambridges in context. I am not writing a history book, but if you don't look at people in terms of thir background and history, you get cardboard cutouts.