“I must not give up my attachment to Genealogy, and everything relating to it, because it is the greatest spur to noble and gallant actions.”
Rev. Mark Noble.
“It is a reverend thing to see an ancient castle or building not in decay; or to see a fair timber-tree sound and perfect; how much more to behold an ancient noble Family which hath stood against the waves and weathers of time?”
Bacon. Of Nobility.
A passion for deducing a descent from the most remote progenitor of a family appears to be inherent in mankind; for we trace its existence in all ages, and in almost every state of society. The Hebrews, the oldest historical people in the world, entertained this feeling in a degree perhaps unparalleled in any nation. The Egyptians, Greeks, Scythians, Phrygians, and Romans claimed a very high, though probably a very much exaggerated, antiquity. Alexander claimed descent from Jupiter Ammon; Cæsar’s pedigree was traced without an hiatus to Venus; Arthur’s to Brutus; Hengist’s to Woden! The English peer views with complacency the muster-roll of departed generations, which connects him with Charlemagne or the Plantagenets. The democratic American is proud if perchance he bears the name of a stock renowned in the annals of Fatherland; and even the plebeian Berkeley or Neville of busy London walks a little more erect as he tells you that his great-grandfather came from the same county where dwells the coronetted aristocrat who bears his patronymic! The love of a distinguished ancestry is universal.
The credibility of genealogy depends, like that of every thing else, upon the nature of the evidence by which it is supported. I have met with persons who could not trace their lineage beyond their grandfather; but such instances are rare; for the oral traditions of a family, even in middle life, generally ascend to about the fifth generation, or a century and a half: beyond that all is obscurity. If we go to documents, such as parish registers, monumental inscriptions, and court-rolls, numerous families may be traced 300 years with absolute certainty. An hereditary title or an entailed patrimony carries families of higher pretensions still further; and antient wills, genealogical tables, and the public records lead an exclusive few back to the glorious days of Cressy, to the Norman Conquest, or even to the times of the Edreds and the Edwys. That this antiquity is of the utmost rarity will appear from the data given below.
“At present,” observes Mr. Grimaldi,[306] “there are few English families who pretend to a higher antiquity than the Norman Invasion; and it is probable that not many of these can authenticate their pretensions.” The claim to such an honour, as has just been intimated, is well founded in some families. The Ashburnham pedigree, for instance, is carried two generations higher than 1066; and the family still reside on the spot from whence, at the commencement of the eleventh century, their great ancestor derived his surname. The Shirleys have dwelt upon their estate of Lower Eatington, co. Warwick, uninterruptedly for eight centuries from the time of Edward the Confessor. In Collins’s Peerage (edit. Brydges[307]) there is an abstract of the antiquity of the nobility, from which it appears that out of the 249 peers, 35 could trace their descent beyond the Conquest:
| 49 | beyond the year | 1100 |
| 29 | "" | 1200 |
| 32 | "" | 1300 |
| 26 | "" | 1400 |
| 17 | "" | 1500 |
| 26 | "" | 1600 |
| 30 | "" | 1700 |
Mr. Grimaldi has ably illustrated the sources from which, and from which only, the genealogies of English families can be derived, in his ‘Origines Genealogicæ,’ and any one who will take the pains to consult that curious work may easily convince himself of the futility of attempting to trace pedigrees beyond the periods adverted to. Yet there was a time when the most ridiculous notions prevailed respecting the antiquity of some of our great houses. The royal family were traced in a direct line to the fabulous Brutus, a thousand years before the Christian era; the Cecils pretended to be of Roman origin, and the house of Vaux deduced themselves from the kings of the Visigoths. Many Welsh families went farther, and carried up their pedigree as far as it could well be carried, namely, to Adam! The Scottish and Irish families pretended to an equal antiquity. This taste in the nations descending from a common Celtic stock was probably derived from the bards of antient times, whose office consisted in the recital of the heroic deeds of mighty ancestors. The splendid history of the family of Grace, drawn from a great variety of antient sources, by Sheffield Grace, Esq., F.S.A., contains some of the finest possible specimens of fictitious genealogy. The family is traced, in the male line, to the time of Alfred, and through some female lines to the founder of the human race himself. The pedigree of O’More begins with “God the Father, &c., who was from all eternity [and who] did, in the beginning of time, of nothing create red earth, and of red earth framed Adam, and of a rib out of the side of Adam fashioned Eve; after which creation, plasmatation and formation succeeded generation.” The pedigree is regularly deduced through Adam, Noah, Nilus, and the kings of Scythia to Milesius, who conquered Spain and settled in Ireland. Thence through Cu Chogry O’More, king of Seix, and McMurrough, king of Leinster, in the time of our Henry II, to Anthony O’More, dynast or sovereign of Seix, whose daughter married Sir Oliver Grace about the year 1450!
Considering the vast number of individuals who in the course of a few ages proceed from a common parent, and taking into account the mutations to which families are subject, it is not surprising that the “high” are often found to be “descended from the low, and, contrariwise, the low from the high.” I know a comparatively obscure country gentleman who can (by the most undeniable evidences) prove his descent through three different lines from William the Conqueror, and consequently from the Northman Rollo, the founder of the duchy of Normandy in the tenth century. Two hundred years ago we find some descendants of the line of the Paleologi, emperors of the East, residing in privacy in the little village of Landulph, in Cornwall. In the church of that place there is a small monument to the memory of “Theodoro Paleologus, of Pesaro in Italye, descended from ye imperial line of ye late Christian emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camilio, the son of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, ye sonne of Thomas, second brother of Constantine Paleologus, the 8th of that name, and last of yt line yt rayned in Constantinople until subdved by the Turks; who married wt. Mary, ye daughter of William Balls, of Hadlye in Souffolke, Gent., and had issue 5 children, Theodoro, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy, and departed this life at Clyfton, ye 21st. of Janu. 1636.” Some female descendants of this individual married persons of humble condition in the immediate vicinity of Landulph, and hence, as Mr. Gilbert observes, the imperial blood may still flow in the veins of the bargemen of Cargreen![308] On the other hand, many of our peers descend from tradesmen, and other persons of plebeian condition. Not to meddle with the pedigrees of some of our Novi Domini, the earl of Dartmouth descends from a worthy London skinner of the fourteenth century; the earl of Coventry from a mercer of the fifteenth; and Lord Dudley from a goldsmith of the seventeenth.