331 
1887 .] Mr T. B. Sprague on a Fruitful Marriage . 
in the present enquiry, it would "be desirable to reject every marriage 
entered into by a commoner who was subsequently created a peer. 
For the same reason, if a son was married before his father was 
created a peer, I rejected the son’s marriage. Similar considerations 
apply to the cases where a peer did not succeed to the title in the 
ordinary way, but establisht his claim to a title that had been 
dormant for some time, or succeeded a distant relative ; and to the 
cases where a peer was placed upon the roll of peers in consequence 
of the reversal of an attainder against an ancestor. When a man’s 
name has stood for a long series of years upon the roll of peers, 
each fact as to his marriage, and as to the births and deaths or 
marriages of his children, is usually recorded as it takes place, and 
there is little risk of error or omission ; but when a man is created 
a peer, or succeeds under the exceptional circumstances above 
mentioned, the facts as to his family are not on record in the same 
way, and have to be supplied by himself. No doubt in some cases 
the new peer will give this information with all the desired accuracy, 
but in a good many cases he will not ; and, as it is not possible 
to say with certainty in which cases the information is complete 
and exact, and in which it is defective or incorrect, the only 
safe course is to reject the whole of the cases as clearly liable to 
error. 
In the present investigation I have, as before, taken Lodge’s 
Peerage for 1871 as my starting point; but I have made extensive 
use also of the new Peerage by Foster, publisht for the first time 
in 1880, and I think it right to mention that this has supplied a 
good many dates and other facts which are not given in Lodge. 
Not only are a great number of additional dates of birth, marriage, 
and death given — principally among the collateral branches — but in 
many cases the names and dates of birth of children which are not 
mentioned at all in Lodge. Foster seems not to have relied on the 
somewhat questionable assistance of the peers themselves in re- 
vising the proof sheets, but to have obtained in many cases docu- 
mentary evidence in addition to that which the editor of Lodge 
has used. Foster’s Peerage also gives information, omitted by 
Lodge, as to the children of the married daughters of the peers 
and of their relatives. It cannot, however, be safely used by itself 
for ordinary statistical purposes ; for it not only omits the dates 
