Thomas Yale (New Haven Colony)
[2][3][4] His family was part of the British nobility, as members of the landed gentry, and were a cadet branch of the royal House of Mathrafal, through the Princes of Powys Fadog, Lords of Yale.
[5][6][7][8] His father was a London banker named Thomas Yale, and lived at the Plas Gronow estate in Wales, near Wrexham, now Erddig Hall.
[4] He was also the Chancellor to two heads of the Church of England, being Matthew Parker, Queen Anne Boleyn's chaplain, and Edmund Grindal, the past Bishop of London.
[9] His great-grandfather, Judge John Lloyd, also cofounded the first Protestant college at the University of Oxford, along with Elizabeth Tudor, Lord William Cecil and Sir Nicholas Bacon.
[13][14] With the death of his father in 1619, Yale's mother remarried around 1625 to a wealthy Puritan merchant and Oxford graduate, named Theophilus Eaton.
[19] During this time, Eaton started negotiations with a group of merchants, including Sir Richard Saltonstall, to obtain a royal charter for the colonization of Massachusetts.
[15] In 1636, Harvard College would be created by a vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with Eaton as one of its magistrates and financial managers from London.
[14] The colony grew with outposts in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Connecticut, including the town of Greenwich, which Gov.
He came from a prominent family; his brother, Francis Davenport, was the royal chaplain of Queen Henrietta Maria, aunt of Louis XIV of Versailles.
[32] The colony grew for its first decade, with territories added such as Milford, Guilford, Branford, Stamford and Southold, New York, on Long Island Sound, next to the Hamptons.
Edward Hopkins, formed the New England Confederation, a military alliance with other colonies against the attacks of Indians and Dutch from New York, named New Amsterdam at the time.
[42] In 1650, Yale's half-brother, magistrate Samuel Eaton, became one of the seven founders of the Harvard Corporation, and became one of its board directors and teachers.
His brother David stayed in Cripplegate, in the City of London, and owned a merchant's counting house there until the Great Plague.
[25] His estate would later be part of the grounds of Yale College, on which the Old Campus was erected, and would later include a parcel owned by Benjamin Franklin.
Edward Hopkins, became the 2nd Governor of Connecticut, and served Oliver Cromwell in England as a Member of parliament and Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty.
[21] Hopkins's uncle, Sir Henry Lello, was Keeper of the Palace of Westminster, and Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire under the Tudors, dealing with Francesco Contarini, Doge of Venice, and Prince Michael the Brave, ruler of Wallachia, a territory previously ruled by Vlad Dracula about 100 years before.
[47] Yale's stepsister married Judge Valentine Hill, a merchant and real estate developer, associate of Deputy Gov.
[55] Yale's half brother, Samuel Eaton, cofounder of the Harvard Corporation, married the widow of Gov.
[45] His half brother, Theophilus Jr., who lived on Park Lane, London, married a sister of Col. Maunsell, and was an apprentice in the Worshipful Company of Skinners, and attorney of King's Inns in Dublin, Ireland.
[58][59] David was married to Ursula Knight, who was a sister-in-law of minister John Stoughton, stepfather of philosopher Ralph Cudworth, and the aunt of Gov.
[26][62][59] Harvard reverend, Cotton Mather, had been asking him for donations, at the time, an art collector and member of the Royal Society with Isaac Newton.
[63] His other nephew, Thomas Yale, became Ambassador to Narai the Great, King of Siam, representing the British East India Company during the Anglo-Siamese War, led by his brother Elihu.
[65] The ship, built for ocean travel, never reached its destination, and sank in the Atlantic, along with its passengers and cargo of wheat, peas, hides, beaver, pelts and manuscripts.
