The Ancestry of Francis Gallon 21 



professorship in Natural Philosophy at Oxford. It is not without interest 

 that the grandson of Savile and Sedley in the sixth degree should have 

 founded a professorship in his turn. 



One of the moat noteworthy points connected with this branch of 

 Francis Galton's ancestry is the tendency to die out in the male line. 

 Sir Henry Savile left an only daughter, Sir Charles Sedley an only 

 daughter, the Colyears ceased to be in the male line, the Darwin family 

 springing from the Darwin- Collier marriage has ceased to be in the 

 male line, and this is true whether we follow it in either Galton or 

 Darwin branches. The women of the stock have children, but their 

 sons again are childless or nearly childless. This is far too wide- 

 spread a phenomenon to be the result of chance; we must probably 

 conclude that childlessness of the male is a definite heritage of the 

 Savile-Sedley ancestry. It provided keen wit, courtly manners, 

 literary power, and love of adventure, but handicapped the sons with 

 this fatal dower. 



Of Elizabeth Collier's mother I am less able to speak definitely. 

 I have sought for families of Collier which would be at all likely to 

 be in touch with the racing circle of Godolphin, Leeds, and Portmore. 

 The only one I have found was next neighbour to Gog-Magog House, 

 a yeoman family of Collier associated with the villages of Stapleford 

 and Stow-cum-Quy, but a few miles from Cambridge and from New- 

 market. Here a certain Elizabeth Collier was born in 1713; she is 

 not married till the year after Mrs Darwin's birth, but no trace of the 

 registration of that birth has been found 1 . I suspect, but cannot prove, 

 that she was the mother of our Elizabeth Collier, and that shortly 

 before 1745, she came as governess into the household of the Dowager 

 Duchess of Leeds, then wife of Lord Portmore, whose stepson two or 

 three years earlier had married Mary Godolphin, the daughter of Lord 

 Godolphin of Gog-Magog House, Stapleford. Should this be correct, 

 Francis Galton would be a descendant of a member of a family which has 

 produced men noteworthy both in literature and medicine. He would 

 probably be a direct descendant of the father of Jeremy Collier, the 

 famous non-juror. Collier's writings are described as " clear, brilliant and 

 incisive," the work according to Macaulay of "a great master of sarcasm, 

 a great master of rhetoric." Almost singlehanded Collier purged the 



1 That birth is not recorded in the church registers at Weybridge, the home of the 

 Portmores. 



