THE HEREDITY OF RICHARD ROE. 



143 



right to be proud. The Courteneys, Earls of Devon, 

 are again descended from the royal lines of France 

 (Hugh Capet) and Russia, but not from William the 

 Conqueror. To Courteney and Plantagenet the lineage 

 of the Edwards family along other lines has been traced. 



The seventy family names, more or less, with per- 

 haps a thousand representatives, in the first line traced 

 out by Mr. Edwards, are only so many out of billions, 

 if there were no duplications. If there were no repeti- 

 tions, there would be instead of the thousand known 

 ancestors, four billions of persons between Mary Stock- 

 ton Edwards and the time of William the Conqueror. 

 This genealogy is therefore but a strand from an enor- 

 mous network, which, if written out in full, would cover 

 the earth with names. Only the family pride of the 

 Courteneys and Drakes caused even this little of per- 

 sonal descent and personal history to be retained. 

 Their pride permitted this plebeian record of the ple- 

 beian descendants of the Puritan John Drake of Wind- 

 sor to be joined to the sacred annals of the English 

 peerage. 



Most of the English people named in these records 



lived in Devon and Sussex, from which regions the 



American representatives came to Amer- 



A " E ^ h T n ica. The subordinate lines traced out 

 of noble birth. 



lead to the earls of these countries. 



They lead also to many other noble lines in England 

 and Scotland. It is certain, however, that in this there 

 is nothing whatever that is exceptional or even unusual. 

 These people in America were Massachusetts Puritans, 

 plain farmers, squires, and shipwrights, with a lineage 

 or character in no wise singular. Their sole important 

 heritage was the Puritan conscience, not their Norman 

 blood, which they shared with all their neighbours. 

 Studies of this kind show clearly that primogeniture is 



