The Ancestry of Francis Gait on 9 



So much then can be said in favour of the study of Francis 

 Galton's ancestry. While he himself has told us in broad outline 

 what he owes to the strains which were mingled in his blood, there 

 is much that he has not referred to, that possibly he could not refer 

 to, either from modesty or ignorance. I have heard him speak with 

 keen appreciation of his Quaker forbears ; but I doubt if he knew, 

 or if even we now know all they suffered for their faith. Besse's 

 record, in his Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, 

 is little more than a list of fines, imprisonments, and deaths, yet it 

 occupies two large folio volumes, and the present writer, from a study 

 of the Yorkshire records alone, knows how incompletely it represents 

 all that occurred. Of that other wider side of his ancestry — which 

 indeed helped the Apologist Robert Barclay to lighten the grave 

 op23ression directed against the early Society of Friends by actively 

 soliciting his royal kinsmen in their favour — of this side of his ancestry 

 Galton rarely if ever spoke. Yet it is one that we cannot pass over. 



As one who has dealt with many family pedigrees, chiefly of the 

 professional classes, the writer's experience has been of the following 

 kind. In ascending backwards we pass, perhaps through the squirearchy, 

 eventually into the yeoman class. Here there is no hope of going 

 further than the church registers (say to 1600) will carry us, or perhaps 

 the wills a hundred years further. We leave the family on the soil, 

 and we have no trace of further distinction or knowledge of its ever 

 being anything but autochthonous. If a member reached, before that 

 date, celebrity by marked ability, he was either an ecclesiastic who 

 left no offspring, or he and his family were raised to the noble class. 

 Once reach the yeoman class, and there is little hope of going beyond 

 the data in the deeds of the yeoman's chest. A second method of 

 terminating our ascent is to reach a bar-sinister, beyond which in more 

 recent times there is only perhaps feeble family tradition, or in early 

 times little screened disgrace, or even much pride. Lastly we may 

 find ourselves passing into a noble or royal family, which for generations 

 has maintained its position by its physique and mentality. And here, 

 perhaps, we may recognise a distinct difference between what this 

 means now and what it meant before 1700. From our earUest know- 

 ledge of European history, till something like the 17th century, there 

 was a continuous and most stringent selection of all noble and 

 royal stocks. To retain your head on your shoulders and yet rise to 



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