This is not a typical "who begat whom" genealogy. While it is a meticulously researched genealogical record, it is also a gripping story of the Beville family, set against the lives and times of contemporary England, from the day that the original deBeville knight came ashore with William the Conqueror in 1066 A.D. through the arrival of a lone immigrant, Essex Beville, who came to the New World to find his fortunes in the Virginia Colony in 1660. It is from Essex that all Bevilles of any spelling who live in America today are descended.

The first edition of Seven Hundred Years was written and privately printed in 1976 by Asselia S. Lichliter, a linear descendant of Essex Beville. In the course of her research, she spent years in England and France conducting exhaustive research at every historical site she could think of, consulting church records, court documents, deeds, wills, and of course, the extensive records held by the British Museum. She then combined the fruits of this research with her extensive knowledge of English history, producing a book which smoothly integrates a detailed, unbroken genealogy with the context of the times in which the Beville and various collaterally related families lived. It is small wonder that a thousand copies were sold well before her death in 1996.

To meet the continuing demand for this fine work, it has been reissued in a second, specially revised and updated hard-bound edition, one which exceeds the first edition in level of detail and areas of research which have been explored. The book contains several illustrations, a glossary of terms found in medieval documents, detailed indices after each chapter, and appendices including links to other families.