How can people trace British Genealogy futher than 1500s?

[melba_schmelba]

Even with gateway ancestors, you should probably take pedigrees of the aristocracy and gentry before the Wars of the Roses with a big pinch of salt. There was such chaos in the country at that time that many records were lost. Arthur Fox Davies goes into the issue of dubious pedigrees, dubious crests and coats of arms, and the fabled 'descent from a follower of William the Conquerer' in the introduction to his Armorial Families 'The Abuse of Arms'

https://archive.org/details/armorialfamilies00infoxd/page/n11/mode/2up

[Drayke]

A lot, as others have mentioned, depends on luck, location and whether your family descend from high social class's. For example, Welsh ancestry is quite well known for keeping good genealogical records earlier that the 13th century as many bards wrote poems and obituaries of prominent families and their naming system of using 'ap/ab' for 'son of' and 'ferch/verch' for 'daughter of' also helps as you can have an entire line traced back 100's of years in a single paragraph.

Whilst yes there are also always the gateway ancestors, however even these require careful study as many of the pedigrees available for them (including visitations) are incorrect or have large gaps and therefore need to be carefully matched with sources available for the respective periods.

There are also other ways that a person can trace further back from the 1500's but that depends on whether those sources have been released yet. For example land records held by the aristocracy in their archives that have yet to be made public.

Records that can be helpful other than parish records are: wills, manorial documents, assize rolls, state papers, indictments, pipe rolls, Inquisition post mortem, coroners inquests, etc. All of these sometimes have detailed family entries from parents, siblings, children, spouses, etc.

The other problem many face is locating the records or even reading them. For example www.medievalgenealogy.org.uk has some good help guides and transcribed materials. If you are looking for older records sometimes you have to look at university archives such as http://aalt.law.uh.edu/ which offers original images of rolls from 1199 to the reign of Victoria. All in latin however.

That all said, despite what others say elsewhere, the chances of you actually being able to prove your farmer ancestors were somehow descended from a gateway ancestor (nobility or royalty) with concrete evidence (i.e. wills, land records or the above records) is very slim unless they were the eldest child of eldest child or had siblings mentioned in the afore mentioned documents.

[Biggles50]

Furthest record back I've manage to establish with confidence is a marriage between two ancestors that took place on 5 February 1555 in a village in Devon.

It completely depends on location and status as to how far back you can get. A good location can get you back to the 16th century even without any noble blood, any further back than that you pretty much need some nobility.

But I agree with Biggles, after a certain distance back, it can start to feel like you're essentially just researching history rather than ancestry. I don't have a gateway ancestor and sometimes I wish I did, whereas other times I am kind of glad I don't. I know for a fact I'd get addicted to tracing everyone and that would just dominate my life 

Researching History, you are spot on with how I felt.

It gets a bit much when you find that ancestors on different lines were hell bent on killing each other.

Knowledge of History and in particular notable Family Surnames like Neville, Southworth, Houghton, Hesketh, Stanley, Montague, le Strange etc can help in discovering a Gateway.

That is precisely what happened in our case my Wife found a le Strange in the tree we looked at when in Lancashire Archives and I found a surname Carlton in my ancestors.

Some eminent genealogist deduced that for over 90% of people of English origins they are related directly to King Edward III.

To my mind we are all one family.

[melba_schmelba]

That all said, despite what others say elsewhere, the chances of you actually being able to prove your farmer ancestors were somehow descended from a gateway ancestor (nobility or royalty) with concrete evidence (i.e. wills, land records or the above records) is very slim unless they were the eldest child of eldest child or had siblings mentioned in the afore mentioned documents.

All good points you made. This recent post by bearkat on the Peasant's Revolt (1381) with a searchable and browsable list of participants and places is also a great source
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=873499.0

What I posted there, was that, even if you can't prove a continuous link genealogically, just researching people of the same name(s) or in the same general area your ancestors lived later might be the best you can do, if you want a 'personal' connection to the medieval period.
  And, yes, the yeoman farmers or well off artisans did often have some gateway ancestor somewhere along the line, because of the hard-up gentleman's daughter being married off 'down' the classes . It really didn't take many generations for social class to drop, especially if people were orphaned, or their parent or grandparent made some catastrophic financial decision, or, in the case of Catholic gentry, where they were punished through land or asset appropriation, or later under the popery laws of the 18th century (in Britain and Ireland), which made more insidious rules that sought to eradicate Catholic landowners.
  In my own experience wills can also be a very important part of tracing a line accurately, and will often prove that information in Herald's Visitations or other pedigrees was wrong.

[coombs]

i have struggled to get back further than the late 1700s on all lines, and even some of those are really only 'maybe'

I have several lines where it is a "maybe" or "very likely". I add a note on my Ancestry tree saying "A Joe Bloggs was baptised in nearby such and such a parish 25 years earlier. More sleuthing needed", so to let other viewers of the tree know I am targeting a candidate but also that I have not added them to my tree.

For instance my ancestor Susan Riches of Norwich who wed in 1725, I have no idea who her parents were due to the common Norfolk surname but have eliminated many candidates (died in infancy, married another person, mentioned as wed to a different spouse in a relative's will) but one known baptism left is 1691 but that would make her 48 in 1739 if she is the same person when she had her last child who lived to adulthood. The 1691 is a deffo maybe. One day I may find the smoking gun but when you get back that far it may not happen but never say never.

I have traced a few lines back to the 1500s and found a gateway ancestor born in Bedfordshire in 1610.

[clayton bradley]

I have no gateway ancestor, just ordinary people. For a long time we couldn't be certain of the parentage of Abraham Broadley who had children in Darwen, Lancs from 1654, until a cousin started a Y-DNA group. It has been hard work but our direct branch is now back to an unknown Broadley born about 1490, father  of two brothers who married mid-fifteen hundreds. From the Y-DNA we know that we are descended from John Brodelegh who was Constable of Ovenden in 1362 when he built Broadley Hall. We have gathered every possible early Broadley reference, bought wills and disputes and read many books. Thanks for the help from aalt, as well. And if anyone has any further suggestions for ordinary people in the 15th century, I'm all ears.