I realize that we can never know anything with full certainty, but as some of you know I am going to Paris next week.
My father nor his father went to France. My patrilineal line before that were common folks that never made the history books, but were of Anglo-Norman heritage. It is unlikely that any of them went on holiday in France.
Given that, what is the likelihood that the last patrilineal ancestor of mine who set foot in France was a soldier of William the Conqueror who got in a boat in 1066? Can that be said with any certainty?
No. Given that you know that at least one ancestor was a soldier, there’s at least the possibility that others were too. English/Norman soldiers continued to cross the channel for quite a while. In addition, if your family was in service to a lord who travelled back and forth (footman, valet, what-have-you), English nobility continued to travel to France and the continent from 1066 all the way to the present day as tourists (with occasional lapses for hostilities). Your ancestor might have made such a trip as well.
Without more concrete information about your line, it’s impossible to eliminate the possibility.
Sure, your ancestors may not have been popping over for some duty free booze, but the level of contact between the two countries has been very high for centuries. Many of the Kings of England were also kings of chunks of France, and some of them (Richard the Lionheart most notably) actually lived in France, barely visiting England. Visiting France wasn’t a big thing at all for nobility, and they’d be dragging servants and soldiers over every time.
Plus the wars, when half the countryside (the male half) could be rounded up, armed, and shipped over to fight, by the local lord.
Add to that fishermen, as it’s really not very far, 20.7 miles at the narrowest point, and traders (legitimate or otherwise), and there’s a pretty good chance one of them would have been over, in that many generations.
According to various historical novels I’ve read, it doesn’t seem that at it was all that uncommon for fairly ordinary people to sail between France and England. Also, I can’t name many of them, but I suspect over five or six centuries, one of your ancestors was a soldier or sailor who served in a campaign over there. And a pretty large number of people in those days worked as merchant seamen.
So Id say the chances are pretty slim that over 30 generations, no ancestor made it across.
It does depend, to some extent, on what part of England the OP’s patrilineal ancestors lived in, what was their position in life. If they lived in the south coast and pursued a variety of occupations the chances that none of them ever crossed to France are not high. But if he comes from a long line of yeoman who farmed the same smallholding in Cumbria, passed on from father to son, until one of them migrated to America, yeah, quite possible.
And of course – I’m sorry to have to say this, and no offense meant-- but there’s a non-zero chance your official patrilineal line is not your actual line of ancestry. And the kind of guys who were more likely to be, uh, extra-legal fathers, were also more likely to be well-traveled (for one reason or another).
So there’s a definite limit on the certainty one could put on this, even if all your official patrilineal line was known and confirmed that they never went to France.
English kings ruled more of France than French kings did until King John lost everything in 1200 or so. And there were quite a few wars during that time, and more afterwards, trying to get the land back. I would expect your ancestor who was a soldier under William probably had descendants who were also soldiers under later kings, especially since fighting in wars is something almost all adult men were expected to do, and who therefore had many opportunities to visit and fight in France.
It was a particular hobby over hundreds of years for the kings of England to gather up a bunch of soldiers and camp followers and sail over to France for some general marauding, looting, and conquering.
The level of hostilities ebbed and waned, but there was a thing called the Hundred Year’s War. Plus a bunch of other wars.
