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OCR Rendition - approximate
Appendix 245 ago' was much harder to acquire than at present. His accuracy is often greater than that provided in the more elaborate pedigrees of the present day. I. have had, of course, to judge occasionally between conflicting statements, but if the reader finds my pedigree differs at points from other versions, it has not been done without inquiry, and con-' sideration. It is impossible here to defend in detail the version actually provided. Of course the present work differs absolutely in character from the excellent, privately printed, Pedigree of the Family of Darwin, 1888, compiled by the Somerset, Herald, H. Farnham Burke. The object of that work was to trace as completely as possible all the descendants of William Darwin of Marton (who died c. 1542) without regard to their achievements. The scope of the present pedigree is to follow back from Charles Darwin himself those lines which lead us to persons noteworthy in the history of this country, or noteworthy from the standpoint of European history. - It is needless to say .that in a certain sense such a pedigree cannot be complete. Further research would be certain to lead us to still further instances of noteworthy men or women. Indeed to keep the pedigree within anything like reasonable bounds. I have had to indicate occasionally only final ancestors, and in other cases to entirely omit lines I perfectly well knew to be of distinction, but for which no space was available. The reader who studies this pedigree alongside that of Francis $alton will be struck with many similarities, but some marked differences. The turning point, of course, lies in the Howard marriage of Erasmus Darwin. That marriage brought into the Darwin stock the sound commercial energy of the Foleys (see Plate LXIII), who like Galtons and Farmers had amassed large wealth by iron-foundries. It gave also to the Darwin stock their share of aristocratic and ultimately royal blood through Pagets and Devereux, an acquisition which the Galtons had made through the Barclays; it supplied also a pleasure pursuing element in Lettice Knollys and Penelope Devereux, which may be paralleled in the Colyear strain of Francis Galton ; but it failed to provide anything of the strong religious nature that we find the Quakers contributing to Francis Galton's stock. We largely miss too the strong admixture of Scottish blood, though possibly the Butlers, de Burghs and Fitzgeralds may supply Celtic imagination. It is of interest to note that Galton and Darwin were linked together by common blood in a variety of ways wholly independent of Erasmus Darwin. I should not wish the reader to look upon a pedigree like the present as an amusing tour de force. I think, on the contrary, that it illustrates a principle expressed by Galton himself on more than one occasion, namely that those who have chiefly made the history of this country, we may indeed say of Europe, fall into relatively few strains and these strains are closely linked together by blood relationships 2. Distinguished leaders of men judges, Speakers of the House of Commons, leaders of commerce, warriors, diplomatists, and men of affairs-are all there in the background and linked by ties of blood with the modern leaders of men-the originators of ideas which govern human progress-with men like Darwin and Galton. I have not reproduced fully Mary Howard's immediate relatives. They belonged to a strain almost as physically delicate as the Buttons (see p. 36 above). Charles Howard, Mary Howard's father, died at 64, her mother at 40, their daughter Elizabeth lived ' His single pedigrees of various lines do not reach back to the same distant ancestry as mine do, but they have been very helpful. I See the quotation from a letter of Galton's to Nature given on p. 6 above.
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