Appendix A 



provides that the high quaHties which once set noble- 

 man apart from peasant shall be spread through the 

 whole body of the people by means of a constant trans- 

 fusion from the "first estate" to the third. The lack of 

 such a system left France, especially, to be overrun by 

 a hungry and impecunious nobiHty. 



Records gathered by Mr. Edwards, supplemented by 

 a series of unpublished charts prepared for me by Miss 

 Kimball, a well-informed genealogist, show plainly the 

 method by which the diffusion takes place. The daughter 

 of a king, for example, marries a nobleman; one of her 

 descendants takes a squire or younger son; a daughter 

 of the squire marries a yeoman, whose children are thus 

 of kingly descent. And every New England farmer of 

 Puritan lineage may boast of as much of the germ plasm 

 of William, Alfred, or Charlemagne as any royal house- 

 hold in Europe; reversedly, plebeian blood may be mingled 

 with the "bluest," usually to the betterment of both. 

 As a matter of fact, indeed, very few Englishmen or 

 Americans of English origin are without royal blood; nor 

 is it likely that the coat of arms of any king living does 

 not conceal the bar sinister of the peasant.^ 



Moreover, Miss Kimball's studies show that some 

 hundreds of well-known Americans may trace their 

 ancestry to Isabel de Vermandois, a descendant of Charle- 

 magne, who married successively Robert de Bellomont 

 and WilHam de Warren. Doubtless millions of others 

 could uncover for themselves the same lineage should 

 they take the trouble. Nevertheless, my assertion of 

 royal descent for the average New England farmer was 

 questioned by G. G. Coulson, a Cambridge don, who 

 declared it "absurd." Upon my having argued the case, 

 adding that many other absurd things are also true, he 

 finally admitted that it might be the fact with those 

 descended from "good families of the County"! 



^ This whole subject was treated somewhat fully by me in "The Heredity 

 of Richard Roe," 191 1. 



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