William John Skyvington

Skeffington William John Skyvington

This one-name study starts from an unknown patriarch called Sceaft. Since this word designates a shaft, a javelinr or a spear in ancient Saxon, the author refers to him as Spearhead. He may have been a Viking whose descendants found their way to Normandy in France. The author believes that descendants of this legendary Spearhead settled at the site of present-day Skeffington in Leicestershire, in the wake of the Norman invasion. Maybe the Conqueror himself was a descendant of Spearhead. This speculation leads the author to a far-fetched possibility: the idea that, following a path from Leicestershire down to Dorset, he might well be a Y-chromosome genetic descendant of both Spearhead and the Conqueror.