Godscall Paleologue

Godscall Paleologue was born on 12 January 1694, the daughter of the privateer Theodore Paleologus, who had died the year before, and his wife Martha Bradbury.

[1] She was the last recorded member of the Paleologus family, which claimed to be a branch of the ancient Palaiologos dynasty, rulers of the Byzantine Empire from 1259 to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

All other purported ancestors (descendants of this John) of the later Paleologus family can be verified through contemporary records, making their descent from the emperors plausible, but somewhat uncertain.

[2] In The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands (1950), English historian Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote (on Godscall) that "this oddly-named little girl remains the last authentic descendant of the Paleologi"[3] and in Byzantium: The Decline and Fall (1995), English popular historian John Julius Norwich identified Godscall as "the last known descendant of the Emperors of Byzantium".

Another explanation is that one or both of her parents were Puritans (though there is no evidence that they were), who in the 17th century often gave eccentric godly names to their children, such as Sorry for Sin or Fear the Lord.

Hall suggests that the girl may have been sickly and that her mother feared for her imminent death, accepting that "God was calling her" and thus giving the child the name "Godscall".

Notably, the novel The Course of the Heart (1992) by science fiction and fantasy author M. John Harrison accords magic to the Paleologus family as imperial descendants.

[13] In Jane Stevenson's novel Empress of the Last Days (2003), the hero of the book falls in love with a young black-skinned Barbadian girl by the name Melita Paleologue and they trace her lineage to the marriage between a daughter of King James VI & I, Elizabeth Stuart (called "the Winter Queen"), and a dark-skinned physician (Elizabeth Stuart was actually married to Frederick V of the Palatinate).