Highgrove roots: Prince of Wales is related to builder of Highgrove

_. Digging around in Burke's Peerage I have found a quirky, piquant link between the Prince of Wales and the man who built Highgrove.

The oddly named John Paul Paul, the man who built Highrove, is related to Prince Charles, who has owned the house for over thirty years. Their common ancestor was an Elizabethan worthy from Weymouth named Richard Pitt.

Through Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, the Cavendish-Bentinck Dukes of Portland, the Harley Earls of Oxford, the Prince of Wales descends from Pitt's daughter, Grace. John Paul Paul is descended from Grace's sister Margaret, whose daughter married one Rev. Nicholas Paul and gave birth to two sons, Onesiphorous and Nathaniel. The latter, a soap-boiler and citizen of Bristol, was John Paul Paul's great-great-grandfather.

John Paul Paul's curious double name came about when the father changed the family name from Tippetts to Paul on inheriting the lands of his uncle John Paul, of Tetbury, the legal writer and author of 'Every Landlord or Tenant His Own Lawyer'. The family legal practice survived in Tetbury until 1935, and several tablets to Charles's distant kin can be found in Tetbury Church.

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