generations. The exact line of his descent was sought only when it was demanded for a plea in the king’s courts to support his title to his lands.
From the first the work of the genealogist in England had that taint of inaccuracy tempered with forgery from which it has not yet been cleansed. The medieval kings, like the Welsh gentry of later ages, traced their lines to the household of Eden garden, while lesser men, even as early as the 14th century, eagerly asserted their descent from a companion of the Conqueror. Yet beside these false imaginations we find the law courts, whose business was often a clash of pedigrees, dealing with genealogies centuries long which, constructed as it would seem from worthy evidences, will often bear the test of modern criticism.
Genealogies in great plenty are found in manuscripts and printed volumes from the 16th century onward. Remarkable among these are the descents recorded in the Visitation Books of the heralds, who, armed with commissions from the crown, the first of which was issued in 20 Hen. VIII., perambulated the English counties, viewing arms and registering pedigrees. The notes in their register books range from the simple registration of a man’s name and arms to entries of pedigrees many generations long. To the heralds these visitations were rare opportunities of obtaining fees from the visited, and the value of the pedigrees registered is notably unequal. Although it has always been the boast of the College of Arms that Visitation records may be produced as evidence in the law courts, few of these officially recorded genealogies are wholly trustworthy. Many of the officers of arms who recorded them were, even by the testimony of their comrades, of indifferent character, and even when the visiting herald was an honourable man and an industrious he had little time to spare for the investigation of any single genealogy. Deeds and evidences in private hands may have been hastily examined in some instances—indeed, a herald’s summons invites their production—and monuments were often viewed in the churches, but for the most part men’s memories and the hearsay of the country-side made the backbone of the pedigree. The further the pedigree is carried beyond the memory of living men the less trustworthy does it become. The principal visitations took place in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. and Charles II. No commission has been issued since the accession of William and Mary, but from that time onwards large numbers of genealogies have been recorded in the registers of the College of Arms, the modern ones being compiled with a care which contrasts remarkably with the unsupported statements of the Tudor heralds.
Outside the doors of the College of Arms genealogy has now been for some centuries a favourite study of antiquaries, whose researches have been of the utmost value to the historian, the topographer and the biographer. County histories, following the example of Dugdale’s Warwickshire folios, have given much space to the elucidation of genealogies and to the amassing of material from which they may be constructed. Dugdale’s great work on the English baronage heads another host of works occupied with the genealogy of English noble families, and the second edition of “G.E.C.’s” Complete Peerage shows the mighty advance of the modern critical spirit. Nevertheless, the 20th century has not yet seen the abandoning of all the genealogical fables nourished by the Elizabethan pedigree-mongers, and the ancestry of many noble houses as recorded in popular works of reference is still derived from mythical forefathers. Thus the dukes of Norfolk, who, by their office of earl marshal are patrons of the heralds, are provided with a 10th-century Hereward for an ancestor; the dukes of Bedford, descendants of a 15th-century burgess of Weymouth, are traced to the knightly house of Russell of Kingston Russell, and the dukes of Westminster to the mythical Gilbert le Grosvenor who “came over in the train of the Conqueror.”
Genealogical research has, however, made great advance during the last generation. The critical spirit shown in such works as Round’s Studies in Peerage and Family History (1901) has assailed with effective ridicule the methods of dishonest pedigree-makers. Much raw material of genealogy has been made available for all by the publication of parish registers, marriage-licence allegations, monumental inscriptions and the like, and above all by the mass of evidences contained in the volumes issued by the Public Record Office.
Within a small space it is impossible to set forth in detail the methods by which an English genealogy may be traced. But those who are setting out upon the task may be warned at the outset to avoid guesswork based upon the possession of a surname which may be shared by a dozen families between whom is no tie of kinship. A man whose family name is Howard may be presumed to descend from an ancestor for whom Howard was a personal name: it may not be presumed that this ancestor was he in whom the dukes of Norfolk have their origin. A genealogy should not be allowed to stray from facts which can be supported by evidence. A man may know that his grandfather was John Stiles who died in 1850 at the age of fifty-five. It does not follow that this John is identical with the John Stiles who is found as baptized in 1795 at Blackacre, the son of William Stiles. But if John the grandfather names in his letters a sister named Isabel Nokes, while the will of William Stiles gives legacies to his son and daughter John Stiles and Isabel Nokes, we may agree that reasonable proof has been given of the added generation. A new pedigree should begin with the carefully tested statements of living members of a family. The next step should be to collate such family records as bible entries, letters and diaries, and inscriptions on mourning rings, with monumental inscriptions of acknowledged members of the family. From such beginnings the genealogist will continue his search through the registers of parishes with which the family has been connected; wills and administrations registered in the various probate courts form, with parish registers, the backbone of most middle-class family histories. Court rolls of manors in which members of the family were tenants give, when existing and accessible, proofs which may carry back a line, however obscure, through many descents. When these have been exhausted the records of legal proceedings, and notably those of the court of chancery, may be searched. Few English households have been able in the past to avoid an appeal to the chancery court, and the bill and answer of a chancery plaintiff and defendant will often tell the story of a family quarrel in which a score of kinsfolk are involved, and the pleadings may contain the material for a family tree of many branching generations. Coram Rege and De Banco rolls may even, in the course of a dispute over a knight’s fee or a manor carry a pedigree to the Conquest of England, although such good fortune can hardly be expected by the searcher out of an undistinguished line. In proving a genealogy it must be remembered that in the descent of an estate in land must be sought the best evidence for a pedigree.
At the present time the study of genealogy grows rapidly in English estimation. It is no less popular in America, where societies and private persons have of late years published a vast number of genealogies, many of which combine the results of laborious research in American records with extravagant and unfounded claims concerning the European origin of the families dealt with. A family with the surname of Cuthbert has been known to hail St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne as its progenitor, and one surnamed Eberhardt has incorporated in its pedigree such German princes of old times as were found to have Eberhardt for a Christian name.
Genealogy in modern France has, with a few honourable exceptions, fallen into the hands of the popular pedigree-makers, whose concern is to gratify the vanity of their employers. Italy likewise has not yet shaken off the influence of those venal genealogists who, three hundred years ago, sold pedigrees cheaply to all comers. But much laborious genealogical inquiry had been made in Germany since the days of Hübner, and even in Russia there has been some attempt to apply modern standards of criticism to the chronicles of the swarming descendants of the blood of Rurik.
In no way is the gap made by the Dark Ages between ancient and modern history more marked than by the fact that no
