ANCESTORS and DESCENDENTS

WALTER WRIGHT RULE                  and              MAUD RENSHAW RULE

Born August 8,1905                                                    Born July 20,1906

Married October 5 1928 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Origin of the Name

According to a legend embodied in later medieval chronicles, SAINT Rule or SAINT REGULUS, a Greek monk, was in the year 345 warned in a vision that the Emperor Constantine intended to remove the holy relics of the Apostle Andrew from Patras, where they were preserved, to Constantinople, the then capital of the Eastern Roman Empire,                                                                                         

He acted upon the Devine revelation, and accordingly, it is related, went to the shrine wherein. They were kept and took thereof the arm bone, three fingers of the right hand, a tooth, and one of the Apostle's knee-caps and set out with there to a region towards the west, situate in the utmost part of the world. After a perilous voyage with a company of devout men and women he made landfall on the coast near the present town of St Andrews, where he is supposed to have erected a church in commemoration and thanksgiving for their merciful survival. What basis of truth there nay be in this legend it is impossible to say.

It is also related that at the time Regulus landed a vision of the Apostle was revealed to Angus mar Fergus, King of the Picts, promising him victory over his enemies. Angus in gratitude for his subsequent victory dedicated the place to which the relics had been brought "to God and St. Andrew to be head and mother of all the churches in the kingdom of the Pict, Regulus carrying upon his head the relics of St Andrew, his followers chanting hymns,while the King and his men followed them: round the con­secrated ground erected twelve stone crosses. By association with Angus the arrival of Regulus is brought down to a later and more probable date in the eighth century. We can accept Regulus as the founder of the earliest Christian settlement at St Andrews."

This information copied from "St Andrews Cathedral" written by Stewart Cruden ARIBA, FSA Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland and published at Edinburgh by Her "majesty’s Stationary Office.

The picture of the square tower of St.Rules Church is all that remains of the church. St. Andrews Cathedral through whose archway this picture was taken is like St. Rules church, a ruin. John Knox [1505 - 1572 ] a Scottish  Protestant reformer had the alter of the Cathedral destroyed and the relics removed on the grounds that the parishioners were worshiping graven images. The St Rules Church and the Cathedral remained un used for about 150 years after which the town fathers gave the residents the right to "quarry" the remaining structures.

 

Origin of the name RULE [2]

 

"The tower of St Rule's church is 32.92m [108 feet] high. The general features [heretofore described] imply a general conclusion that St Regulus belonged to a Yorkshire pre-Norman building tradition. The Cathedral and Priory of St Andrews is the successor to the adjacent church of St Regulus or St Rule. The church was stripped

of the roof of lead for use at the siege of Sterling. [Circa 1328]. After the Reformation when it suffered the "burning of images and mass-books and breaking of Alters• it was allowed to fall into decay. In 1826 the Barons of the Exchequer took possession of the ruins. In 1946 the priory was given to the Ministry of Works now department

of the Enviorment] by Major M.D.D. Crichton-Stuart."

 

In "Rule Water and It's People" a scotch publication it is reported that St. Regulus was active in preaching the Christian gospel to the people in the area and today we find his name- Rule "later, Hall Rule, and Bed Rule given to small communities in the valley of a small river called Rulewater, a tributary of the Tiviot River in southern Scotland.

 

"Scots Kith and Kin" published by J.S.Lawson & Sons, lists RULE as a family name in Roxburghshire, Scotland. The family name was first established in the thirteenth century. They were of the Rule   sept of the Roxburgh clan".

 

My research as of this date, August 30, 1978 does not account for the granting of Crests and Coats of arms other than that they appear in the publications noted on the drawings from which these drawings were made.

 

Books on heraldry give the meaning and significance of the several symbols common to most coats of arms - example, fleur-de-lis symbolic of "purity" "Arm in Armour embowed holding in the hand a sword all proper" symbolic of "service to the King".