Burke - Royal Descents and Pedigrees of Founders' Kin
Royal Descents and Pedigrees of Founders' Kin - Sir Bernard Burke , LL.D.,
Burke is often quoted by those documenting family histories and geneological decent. Sadly the late
nineteenth century saw this a big business and many historians
published works for those
that were intersted in tracing their familes to royal blood. Sir Bernard Burke was such a historian.
The preface (liner notes) for Royal Descents and Pedigrees of Founders' Kin gives a clue to the tone and
intention of the book:
ΤΟ HIS EXCELLENCY George William Frederick , Earl of Carlisle , K.G.
MY DEAR LORD , RECORD TOWER , DUBLIN CASTLE , 11 Jan. , 1864 .
In dedicating to you my "Royal Descents," I am glad to have the privilege of being permitted to associate
with a Work of mine the honoured name of one, whose talent and worth add lustre even to the ancestral
brilliancy of a race, round which the light of genius has shone so long - a race in whose history the
Poet Surrey, the Scholar Cavendish, and the Statesman Boyle, adorn the roll of hereditary ability.
To your Lordship - the representative of that branch of the illustrious House of Howard, with whose
stem are interwoven the distinguished lines of Mowbray and Dacre , Greystock and Clifford,
and in whose veins flow the best streams of Royal Blood - this book is most appropriately inscribed .
Affectionate esteem enhances the charm of such a dedication.
I am, Dear LORD CARLISLE , ( With sentiments ever of respect and regard , )
Your Excellency's faithful and obliged servant,
J. BERNARD BURKE,
Ulster
Other notes found at the start of the volume: Royal Descents and Pedigrees of Founders' Kin -
relationships drawn between:
ALFRED THE GREAT
ROBERT BRUCE
CHARLEMAGNE
JOHN OF GAUNT
JOAN PLANTAGENET, THE FAIR MAID
LIONEL PLANTAGENET, DUKE of Clarence
EDMUND PLANTAGENET, surnamed of Langley, Duke of York
THOMAS PLANTAGENET, surnamed of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester
MARGARET OF CLARENCE, COUNTESS OF SALISBURY
ANNE OF YORK, DUCHESS OF EXETER
ELIZABETH OF YORK, QUEEN OF HENRY VII.
SEIZE QUARTIERS OF QUEEN VICTORIA.
SEIZE QUARTIERS OF PRINCE ALBERT.
ROYAL DESCENTS OF THE PEERS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND DERIVED FROM KING HENRY VII.
plus ??? Pedigrees and 22 Founders Kin (the scans of the pedigrees in the Google Play copy are a
little "spotty").
Top
Samuel Milbank Raymond can be found as pedigree 63 in Burke's Founders Kin.
I am starting to see a pattern here in keeping with the copy of the The Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval's,
The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal. Another work that is likley to have been "commissioned".
I have found another reference to Burke's Peerage from thepeerage.com
(Darryl Lundy - Wellington, New Zealand)
- [S37] Mosley, Charles, editor. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes.
Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003.
This also leads me to question the authority of Darryl Lundy's research.
Criticism of Burke's Peerage
The Wikpedia page has a section that questions the authority of the work
In 1877, the Oxford professor Edward Augustus Freeman criticised the accuracy of Burke's and said that it
contained pedigrees that were purely mythical – if indeed mythical is not too respectable a name for what
must be in many cases the work of
deliberate invention [... and] all but invariably false. As a rule, it is not only false, but impossible
[...] not merely fictions, but exactly that kind of fiction
which is, in its beginning, deliberate and interested falsehood.[4]
Oscar Wilde in the play A Woman of No Importance wrote: "You should study the Peerage, Gerald.
It is the one book a young man about town should know thoroughly, and it is the best thing in fiction
the English have ever done!" In 1901, the historian J. Horace Round wrote of Burke's "old fables" and
"grotesquely impossible tales"
In many respects the work is somewhat held in the same esteem as The Battle Abbey Roll by the Duchess of Cleveland.
