Maurice Boddy

I came across the Maurice Boddy website when I was looking for some background on Guy de Botetourt. It seems that I have found an incredible "Life-times Work".

Sadly, the Maurice Boddy website seems have met its demise, if you are trying to access it please see here

Maurice's website is titled "The Boddy Family Tree". It is written in Microsoft's Front Page (I have not seen that for a long while!)

While the Maurice Boddy website was fully indexed, the navigation throughout the site proved to be challenging. This is probably due to much has moved on since the 20 years the domain was registered in December 2003. As a comparision I registered tempusfugit.ca in January 2004.

Maurice must have spent many years creating his website, as there was so much information there.

The Codes:

Maurice uses a reference system that he does explain on his website, an example can be seen below, [BOTE391]. The key relates to generations. He also uses Red and Black to denote relationships through marriage and other connections in black (I don't see many of these).

What Maurice says about his codes:

The general rule is that the first 4 characters represent the family name, the next two are numbers representing the generation level, the final digit differentiates those of the same generation (in simplest case a 1 for the male, and 2 for the female). The female level is usually indented to stress that the descent from this point is with another family.

[BOTE391] - I am not quite sure what the 39 refers - Guy de Botetourt is 1 for male. Third generation 3.9?

I have a theory that the 9 means that it is not known what the order of birth is, 1 is first boen and 2 second and so on.

Top

mauriceboddy.org.uk/Essex.htm

Maurice Boddy was found when searching for Botetourt and Ellingham, Suffolk. The section below is a transcription from his page on the Botetourt family. There is a fair amount of correlation between Maurice's research and my own. I admit that I was lucky that I caught Maurice Boddy's website when it was still active and that I made the search that I did. If I made the search today (February 2024) I would only find my own pages.

I have also transcribed the entry for Geoffrey de Mandeville in a similar manner.

The following text has been re-formatted from Maurice's website:

[BOTE391] Guy de Botetourt, held Ellingham Manor (Norfolk).

[BOTE401].John de Botetourt (born 1264), married (1285) [FOTH402] Matilda FitzOtto (daughter of Thomas FitzOtto, see FITZOTTO). He was Governor of St. Briavel's Castle (1291), Admiral for the North Seas (1294-97), created 1st Lord of Botetourt (1305). He fought on the side of the rebels at the Battle of Boroughbridge (16th March 1321-22) for which he was later fined and pardoned. He died 25th November 1324.

[BOTE414] Sir Thomas de Botetourt (born c.1286, son of John & Maud) married [SOME503] Joane, Lady of Honesworth de Somery.

[BOTE422] Maud de Botetourt (born c.1315, daughter of John) married [GREY511] Sir Reynold de Grey (born 1st November 1311, see WILTON (GREY) BARONY)

[BOTE412] Ada de Botetourt (daughter of John) married 1. Sir John de Saint Philibert; then 2. (1345) Sir Richard FitzSimon (see SIR RICHARD FITZSIMON).

[BOTE411] Otto de Botetourt (born c.1295), of Mendlesham, married Sibyl. He died 1345.

[BOTE421] John de Botetourt (born c.1333, son & heir), a minor at his father's death, of Mendlesham, married [WEYL512] Katherine Weyland (daughter of Sir William Weyland, see WEYLAND). He died 1377, survived by Katherine.

[BOTE432] Joan de Botetourt (only daughter & heiress of John) married [KNYV431] Sir John Knyvett (see KNYVETT).

I have added links to other pages on tempusfugit.me.uk where I have additional information. The references the Maurice uses should give the visitor a means to find the original page on the Maurice Boddy website (link below)

Accessing the Maurice Boddy website

Sadly Maurice's website seems to be no longer hosted on mauriceboddy.org.uk

The last update on the Maurice Boddy website was in February 2016 and a snap-shot of the site can be found on The Wayback Machine website (this is not a link to the Maurice Boddy Achive).

I have made some screen-shots of the archived pages on The Wayback website and if you require the link to this archive then please send me an email.

To access pages on the Internet Archive you will need the website address (URL) for the particular archive. This will be similar to:
"..... web.archive.org/web/20161124024845/ http://mauriceboddy.org.uk ..." .
If you require the exact URL you will have to search for it yourself or ask me for it. I have found many web.archive.org references in performing research for this website. It has been a time-consuming exercise and not something that I want to freely give away.

Microsoft FrontPage

Inspection of Maurice's code shows that he used Microsoft FrontPage to create and maintain his website. This has been discontinued so anyone taking over the website would probably better off using another tool.

Microsoft FrontPage (full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a discontinued WYSIWYG HTML editor and website administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003. Microsoft FrontPage has since been replaced by Microsoft Expression Web and SharePoint Designer, which were first released in December 2006 alongside Microsoft Office 2007, but these two products were also discontinued in favor of a web-based version of SharePoint Designer, as those three HTML editors were desktop applications.

I understand that Maurice's computer has been given to his grandson but it is unlikely that Microsoft FrontPage, or the old computer, be used to re-launch the website.

As an experiment I have started making a webpage based on Maurice Boddy's own biography from the information found on last capture of the Internet Archive copy his website.

Maurice Boddy

Links