140 MARRIAGE AND HEREDITY 



of vice, insanity, and sterility — we come to the royal 

 families of England. 



In the Plantagenet period the rival houses of Lan- 

 caster and York, Jacoby declares, were both degenerate, 

 the former being a family of fools and imbeciles, the 

 latter of knaves, including Eichard III, whose para- 

 lysis and deformities indicated the neuropathic nature 

 of the family villainy. The Tudors were in similar case. 

 Henry VIII was cruel, sanguinary, and lascivious; 

 his son Edward VI died at eighteen, — and a tendency 

 to early death as well as sterility, be it remembered, 

 is an unfailing sign of family degeneracy, — while his 

 daughter Mary was fanatical and childless, and his 

 other daughter Elizabeth eccentric, avaricious, cruel, 

 and malformed. Among the Stuarts insanity declared 

 itself as early as the time of James V, and through 

 Mary Queen of Scots the taint was communicated to 

 James I. of England, who was foolish, fanatical, 

 cowardly, slovenly, and given to stuttering. To the 

 daughter of James I, Elizabeth, who married the 

 Elector Palatine Frederick V, and who served ulti- 

 mately to bring the Crown of England to the Hanover- 

 ian dynasty, we shall presently return. Charles I. — 

 to follow the direct line of the Stuarts — was perfidious 

 and cowardly; Charles II depraved, epileptic, and 



