Classic Spurious Pedigree case?

Online link to the aforesaid book here: http://archive.org/stream/genealogicalmem01wategoog#page/n134/mode/...

Thank you for that Maven.

I came across this information on this subject in another discussion:

"This letter provides persuasive evidence that Sir William Segar,
Garter King of Arms, was correct in showing this Weston family to be
descended from Ralph Neville, Lord Neville. Sir Simon Weston, who was
his father’s heir and lived in Lichfield, surely knew the identity of
his grandmother. Sir Simon had no apparent motive to fabricate
information about his grandmother, especially since he was writing in
response to an inquiry by his cousin who was not a descendant of
Cecily."

The entire post is here:
http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-MEDIEVAL/2011-12/...

The above post is about Cecilia Weston

Here's a skeptic dashing cold water on this case: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-MEDIEVAL/2011-12/...

Money quote: "Elevating the family origins from yeoman stock to noble blood benefits
not only Sir Simon himself but his entire Weston family."

Doug Richardson weighs in: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/GEN-MEDIEVAL/2011-12/...

Beginning to see why it can be valuable to read the WHOLE discussion, and not just one selected message?

https://our-royal-titled-noble-and-commoner-ancestors.com/p1922.htm...

There is no mention of a Cecilia in any of the below sources:

The Complete Peerage, by Cokayne, Vol. XII/2, p. 552-553. Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, p. 441-442. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, 2nd Edition, Vol. III, p. 5. Douglas Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, 2nd Edition, Vol. III, p. 253. Douglas Richardson, Royal Ancestry, Vol. III, p. 542. Douglas Richardson, Royal Ancestry, Vol. IV, p. 241. The Complete Peerage, by Cokayne, Vol. XII/2, p. 553. The Complete Peerage, by Cokayne, Vol. XII/2, p. 553-554.

Huh. Shall we scrap this Discussion, then?

New documents were uploaded

It's a hard call.

This record has a date of birth of 1540 and was found on Ancestry on someone's tree.

Information below pasted from source.

Miss ( Daughter) Weston

Gender F (Female)
Birth Date 1540
Birth Place Essex, Essex, England, United Kingdom
Father
John Weston of Lichfield
Mother
Cecilia De NEVILLE
View on Geneanet
https://gw.geneanet.org/cvbb51?n=weston&oc=&p=miss+daughter

I hope the new documents help. Erica Howton

I'll keep searching

I cannot provide a definitive answer to this conundrum but my comments are as follows:-
1) There was a Cecily (or Cecilia) Neville born to Ralph Neville but five generations earlier than the Cecilia who may or may not have married John Weston. The earlier Cecily (1415-1495) was the 22nd child of Ralph Neville (1364-1425) 1st Earl of Westmorland by his second wife Joan Beaufort.
2) The later Ralph Neville (1473-1498) had two wives The first was Mary Paston (c1471-1489). She died while both of them were in their mid-teens. It is possible, but in my opinion unlikely, that they had a daughter Cecilia in c1488 before Mary's untimely death.
3) Ralph Neville's second wife was Edith Sandys the only known daughter of Sir William Sandys (1493-1496). She is often shown as being born in c1471 a year after Sir William Sandys junior who was later 1st Lord Sandys of The Vyne (1470-1540) but I prefer to think that she was born in c1468 in the gap between John Sandys (1465-1486), the first son of Sir William senior, and Sir William junior. The third son Richard was born in c1472.
4) Ralph Neville had son Ralph by Edith Sandys before his death in1498.
5) As Edith's husband Ralph Neville died a year before before his father and the title passed to Ralph junior, son of Ralph and Edith Sandys, I cannot see how Edith should have had the title of Lady Neville. This would have been different if her husband had died after his father but before their son came of age.
6) Edith Neville married Thomas Darcy early in 1500 as his second wife. He already had three children by his first marriage to Dowsabel Tempest.
7) On balance, I think that there was not another Cecilia from any of this curious series of marriages and that the only Cecilia Neville was the one in paragraph (1) above.
Nick Alexander

I couldn't sleep! The first Cecily Neville (1415-1495) was the mother of King Edward IV and King Richard III. She was still alive when Ralph Neville (1473-1498) married Edith Sandys. So perhaps it is not so unreasonable for Ralph and Edith to name a daughter Cecilia after her - possibly in the same year that the first Cecilia died.
I have found one other Cecilia in the family. She was the daughter of Richard Neville 5th Earl of Salisbury and a niece of the Cecilia above. She married into the Beauchamp family. Her dates were 1425-1450.

After sending my last reply, I realised that not everyone in this discussion will be up to speed with the Sandys family. If Cecilia Neville wife of John Weston was the daughter of Edith Sandys, Cecilia's grandfather was the first Sir William Sandys of The Vyne who died in 1496. This William fought for, and was knighted by, King Edward IV at the battle of Tewkesbury in 1471. (He did not support King Richard III.) As King Edward IV was a son of the earliest Cecilia Neville (1415-1495), Sir William would be quite likely to recommend Cecilia as the name of his grand-daughter if indeed she was born in 1495 or 1496. Circumstantial evidence but better than nothing?
Nick Alexander

The heraldry evidence seems very clear that the Cecilia Neville who married John Weston was indeed the daughter of Ralph Neville and Edith Sandys.
The high social status of the subsequent Weston generations seems to confirm their upward social mobility but we have other examples in the earliest generations of the Sandes/Sandys family where the sons of country squires or landed gentry married into the families of minor nobility and worked their way higher in subsequent generations.
Ralph Neville (1456-1499) 3rd Earl of Westmorland had "backed the wrong horse" by supporting King Richard III and he had had to offer his son (Edith's husband) in custody to King Henry VII including giving the King the right to choose the son's bride.
Edith was in a more lowly social stratum than Ralph but her brother the second Sir William Sandys was a staunch supporter of King Henry VII and that might have been an influence on the King's approval (or command) over the marriage.