Kate’s ancestry on her father’s side is Leeds-based woollen cloth merchants and manufacturers, while on her mother’s side she is descended from working-class labourers and miners from Sunderland and County Durham. You have to go back almost 500 years to find a future English Queen Consort with comparable links to trade and the merchant classes.
Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, great-grandfather of Henry VIII’s second queen, Anne Boleyn, was a mercer (dealer in fabrics) and wool merchant before becoming Lord Mayor of London.
"I was more disappointed - disappointed that people are still behaving like that in 2014," said Samuel Aarons.But those grandiose ceremonial styles cannot disguise the fact there has never been a royal child quite like Kate’s.
52 Comments