WESTMINSTER:
JOHN BOWER NICHOLS AND SONS.
PREFACE.
"That noble families are continued in a long succession of wealth, honour, and reputation, is justly esteemed as one of the most valuable of worldly blessings, as being the certain tokens of God Almighty's providential favour, and the prudent conduct of such ancestors,"—Nath. Johnston's Account of the Family of Bruce Earl of Aylesbury, 1691, Harl. MS, 3879.
THE following imperfect attempt to bring together a few notes relating to the ancient aristocracy of England, is confined in the first place to the families now existing, and regularly established either as knightly or gentle houses before the commencement of the sixteenth century; secondly, no notice is taken of those families who may have assumed the name and arms of their ancestors in the female line: for the truth is, as it has been well observed,* "that, unless we take the male line as the general standard of genealogical rank, we shall find ourselves in a hopeless state of confusion;" thirdly, illegitimate descent is of course excluded; and, fourthly, where families have sold their original estates, they will be noticed in those counties where they are at present seated; if however they still possess the ancient estate of their family, though they may reside in another county, they will be mentioned for the most part under that county from whence they originally sprung.
In those cases where the whole landed estate of the family has been dissipated, although the male line still remains, all notice is omitted, such families having no longer any claim to be classed in any county. For, "ancient dignity was territorial rather than personal, the whole system was rooted in the land, and, even in the present day, though the land may have changed hands often, it has carried along with it some of that sentiment of regard attached to the lordship of it, as surely as its earth has the fresh smell which it gives when upturned by the husbandman."**
This list also, it must be remembered, does not profess to give an account of all those families whose descent may possibly be traced beyond the year 1500, but merely of those who were in the position of what we now call county families before that period. The line of demarcation indeed between the families who rose upon the ruins of the monastic system, and the more ancient aristocracy of England, is often very difficult to be traced, depending as it does on documentary evidence often inaccessible, and obscured by the fanciful and too favourable deductions of the heralds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
With regard to the sources from whence the following memoranda have been taken, I have endeavoured as much as possible to rely upon the best county histories and MS. collections of authority, and carefully to eschew those modern accounts of family history, which, by ascribing the most absurd pretensions of ancient lineage to families who bore no real claim to that distinction, have done much to bring genealogy itself into contempt among that numerous class of readers who are but slightly acquainted with the subject.
I cannot conclude without recording my obligations to several gentlemen who have in the most liberal manner placed their genealogical collections at my service, and by so doing rendered less imperfect these notices of the noble and gentle houses of England: among that number I wish particularly to mention the names of the late Mr. Joseph Morris of Shrewsbury and Mr. Joseph Hunter, one of the Assistant Keepers of the Records, the learned and accurate historian of South Yorkshire.
E.P.S.