How much do you know about your ancestors? We have hereditary links to the Beaufoy family, who take their name from the beech tree. Beaufoy comes from the old French and means ‘beautiful beech’.
The genealogy of the Beaufoys traces back to Normandy in the eleventh century, and includes marriages with the de Ferrers, de Clare, and Plantagenet families. Beaufoys arrived in England with King William I and the Norman conquest of 1066. At the time the name was spelt in a number of ways: Galsagus, Bellofagus, Beaufoe, Beaufou, or Beaufo. The Latinised version was in use until about the middle of the fourteenth century. A record of the family history, (G. Beaufoy, Leaves from a beech tree. Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1930), speculates that some of the Beaufoys were probably among the leaders in the Italian wars when Rollo crossed the Alps, and many Latinised their names to commemorate their victories.
The Arms of the family were first used by Thomas Beaufou in the fourteenth century: Ermine, on a bend az three cinquefoils or: for Beaufoy. The crest, a beech tree with the motto ‘sub tegmine fagi’. It was in the seventeenth century when Henry Beaufoy adopted the spelling as it is today. Our family had the Beaufoy name until our third great grand mother, Anne, who was born in 1805. She was the only child of Lieutenant Benjamin Beaufoy, a direct descendant of Sir Thomas Beaufoy (1545-1630).
Glencoe Park 