Colonial Genealogy 



(a) Through Isabel de Vermandois from her father, Hugh the 



Great, son of Henry I of France; and 



(b) Through Isabel from her mother, Adelheid de Vermandois; 



(c) Through Lady Alice de Courteney, from her father Pierre; 



(d) Through the Plantagenets and their descendants, from 



Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conqueror, 

 herself descended from Charlemagne and Alfred alike. 



Of Charlemagne, our common forebear, we read that 



He was sagacious, energetic, and vigilant as a ruler and 

 commander alike. He watched over and fostered agriculture, 

 trade, art, and letters, with untiring zeal, clearing away forests, 

 draining swamps, founding monasteries and schools, building 

 cities, constructing splendid palaces as at Aix, Worms, and 

 Ingelheim and drawing to his court scholars and poets from all 

 nations. . . . He was himself proficient in science as well as 

 in all hardy accomplishments, speaking Latin and knowing 

 Greek though barely able to write. He was tall and stately, 

 measuring seven feet of his own foot-lengths, with long nose, 

 bright eyes and a feeble voice, but simple in his life, "excelling 

 all men of his time, to all alike dread and beloved, by all alike 

 admired/' as he was described by the early chronicler, Eginhard. 



But according to Mr. H. G. Wells, " the memory of 

 that raiser of political ghosts, that energetic but illiterate 

 theologian, Charlemagne . . . preaching the gospel with 

 fire and sword ... as with Alexander the Great and 

 Julius Caesar has been enormously exaggerated by pos- 

 terity," a habit which runs in his family. But we must 

 consider the dark and bloody background of ignorance 

 and intolerance before which arises his stately figure. It 

 was left to our own generation to crumple the last of his 

 pasteboard imitations. 



As for Alfred, Charlemagne's contemporary, a modern 

 historian says: 



Alike for what he did and for what he was there is none to 

 equal Alfred in the whole line of English sovereigns; and no 

 monarch in history ever deserved more truly the epithet of 

 Great. 



C687 ] 



