Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/246

It is more than a quarter of a century since the late Professor Freeman insisted in strenuous language that he was fighting, not the families who believed in fables about their own origin, but the editors who published these fables and assured their readers that they were true. And he selected Burke's Peerage as the worst case of all, on account of the official status of Ulster King of Arms. In some respects that work to-day is even more open to severe criticism than it was then. For it is not now sinning in ignorance; it is sinning against the light. There is, for instance, perhaps no grosser fiction in the field of English genealogy than the descent of the Ely Stewards from 'the Royal Stuarts' of Scotland, together with the appurtenant bogus grant from a French king. This was exposed long ago by Mr. Walter Rye from the English, and Mr. Bain from the Scottish side. Yet, it was actually added, in the 1900 edition, to the other 'authoritative' statements contained in Burke's Peerage. The introduction of this known imposture was pointed out and denounced by me more than a year ago in Studies on Peerage and Family History; yet this and other fables there exposed are deliberately repeated by the Editor as 'authoritative' in the current issue. I venture to think that a comparison of this plain fact with the statements quoted above from its preface will prove to the readers of The Ancestor not a little instructive and will render any further comment superfluous.

J. HORACE ROUND.