She had more English blood in her, in fact, than Prince Charles-all of it illegitimate. Four of her ancestors were paramours of kings: Barbara Villiers, Lucy Walters and Louise de Kéroualle all bore out-of-wedlock children of King CharlesII; and Arabella, the daughter of the first Sir Winston Churchill, had a baby by James II. Lady Diana's respectable wedding brought the romantic blood of the Stuart monarchs back into the present Royal family for the first time in 280 years, since Prince Charles has no direst descent from the later Stuart Kings.

The couple were distantly related in history, both being descendants of HenryVII through his   great great-grandson James I and having a common ancestor   in the third Duke of Devonshire. Burke's and Debrett's, the two authorities on british peerage, make them seventh cousins once removed. Dukes, earls and barons proliferate in the Spencer family ancestry, including connections with the dukes of Bedford, Grafton and Richmond.

Like the wealth of medieval England itself, the Spencer fortune was fouded on wool. Sir John Spencer, father of the dynasty,  came from Shakespeare's hmoe county of Warwickshire and was knighted by Henry VIII. He grew rich by breeding sheep and in 1506 bought Althorp Hall in Northamptonshire, a county north of London that Queen Elizabeth I found convenient for visiting her nobles. The mansion was remodelled by the architect Henry Holland in the eighteenth century.

Sir John Claimed descent, like many ancient English families, from the Normans who came to England with William the Conqueror, in his case the ancestor was Robert Desoencer, one of William's favorite courtiers. the fifth member   of the family to be knighted, Sir Robert Spencer, was made a baron in 1600. He was said to be the wealthiest man in England at the time of King James I's accession three years later.

The source of the Spencer wealth provoked a famous spat in 1621 between Lord Spencer and Earl of Arundel, one of whose ancestors had been beheaded by Henry VIII. When Arundel jibed tha Spencer's forebears were mere sheep breeders, Spencer retorted: "When my ancestors were keeping sheep, your Lordship's ancestors were plotting treason."  Arundel refused to apologize and was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

The connection with Churchills was made in the early eighteeth century when Charles Spencer, third earl of Sunderland, married a daughter of the duke of Marlborough, one of England's greatest military heroes.  Sir Winston Churchill made his literary name with a biography of his illustrious ancestor, who vanquished the French in a series of brilliant battles in the 1700s. The family tree then divided, a younger Spencer son fouding the dynasty of earls Spencer while the senior branch became the Spencer-Churchils, dukes of Marlborough.  (Lord Randolph Churchill, Sir Winston's father, was the third son of the seventh duke.)

Unlike the Spencer-Churchills, who were politicians ans soldiers by temperament, the Spencers enjoyed a reputation as artistic, charming and pleasur-loving. John, the first earl Spencer, fouded on of England's greatest private art collections at Althorp, and the seventh earl, Diana's grandfather, restored and added to it. The house is filled with superb antique furniture, porcelain and paintings: one drawing room alone has four Rubens portraits.

Two of the earls Spencer came close to beig prime minister. The third earl declined the office, preferring to be chacellor of the exchequer, while the fifth earl, know as the "red earl" for his great red beard, was favored by William Ewart Gladstone to suceed him in 1894, but the post went instead to the earl of Rosebery.

The Spencers have been closely connected with the court for generations: the second earl advised three kings-Charles II, James II and William III-in succession; the fourth was Lord chamberlain to the young Queen Victoria. Lady Diana's own father was equerry to George VI and Queen Elizabeth. That Charles and Diana have formalized their family connections in the intricacies of a state marriage now only seems inevitable.