FALSE PEDIGREES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXI, Issue 5678, 3 May 1880, Page 3

FALSE PEDIGREES.

(The Atlienanm, in a notice of a, new Peerage, edited by Mr Joseph Foster, Baya ; _« The most original feature ol this •work, and one that will doubtless attract a good deal of attention, is a section styled 'Chaos, 1 at the end of the baronetage, of greaf novelty and boldness. This portion tff the work will probably disgust those persons whose pretensions it calls in question, though, on the other hand, it will certainly please genealogists' and all those who do not approve of persons bearing honors to which they are not entitled. To this section of his work Mr Foster relegates the claims of sundry self-styled baronets and the pedigrees of several baronets which require verification, though he disclaims any pretension to pass iudgment on the points to which he calls attention.' Altogether the titles of upwards of 60 baronets are more or less impugned, and sufficient proof is afforded to convince most people of the need there is for making claimants to baronetcies prove their pedigree before assuming their titles. From the cases here brought together it would appear that in some instances persons claiming; to be baronets have put forward one chain of ancestry at one time and another at another time ; that persons assume baronetcies the creations of which are not on record, and revive others that have been extinct or dormant for more than a century, without proving tlieir pedigrees, or on merely going through the form of being served heirs by Scottish sheriffs' juries : and Mr Foster declares that one baronetcy is claimed through maternal ancestors which was limited on its creation to heirs male ! As examples of how easily baronetcies may be assumed, the following instances may be quoted :— A baronetcy long dormant, if not extinct, is, it would" seem, claimed by a person on whose pretensions much doubt was cast in the " Genealogist" for 1878. This gentleman advertised in The Times that he had assumed the title 'by executing a deedpoll, in lieu of recording his pedigree in one of the Colleges of Arms.' Another claimant, says Mr Foster, advertised in The Times that his descent from a younger son of a person created a baronet by King Charles 11. in 16G0, ' is fully set forth in a pedigree compiled by that celebrated genealogist James Phillippe, and enrolled in Her Majesty's High Court of Chancery.'"