“THE COMPLETE PEERAGE’

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1778, 3 July 1926, Page 6

“THE COMPLETE PEERAGE’

THE SPORT OF PEDIGREE-

BUNTLMG.

What was the Third Penny? and by what strange freak of .history should the receipt of it centuries ago determine in 1926 whether or not a certain* man reputed to be Earl of Gloucester was veritably Earl of that county. That (writes a London Observer representative) is but one of the many fascinating problems arising out of the publication last week of Volume VI. of “The Complete Peerage,” that prodigious green-backed monument which eventually, in fourteen volumes, will record for the benefit of history, law, national pride and posterity all that modern scientific research knows of every peerage in the British Isles that ever existed.

The significance of the Third Penny to the Earldom of Gloucester was explained to me recently by Mr H. A. iDou'bleday, associate editor of the enterprise with Major Duncan Whrrand and Lord Howard de Walden, as illustrative of the manner in whidb the work is compiled. “There had always been some doubt,” he said, “as to whether a certain Earl of Gloucester was really Earl of Gloucester. We'll, we went to the trouble of searching the- Pipe Rolls, the earliest series of records extant which might give us the evidence we needed, and so called ber cause they Avere the pipe or conduit through which flowed into the Exchequer the Crown accounts from the sheriffs of the different counties. In these we found that this Earl was certainly in receipt of the Third Penny of the county, which means that he received one-third of the profits of jurisdiction in the county of Gloucester. Only Earls received this Third Penny, but whether all Earls were entitled to it is a question on which scholars are not agreed. That little search cost us, I think, about £3 IQs. We might have found nothing for oui trouble; frequently a search is fruitless. But in this case we were fortunate.”

IBy such painstaking methods does “The Complete Peerage” come into being. Nothing is taken for granted certainly not the claims of individual families themselves which, from the days of Bluff King Hal, when family vied with family in the devising of exuberant, if sometimes fictitious, pedigrees, are frequently at variance with documentary fact. One has to imagine an editor, or triumvirate of editors, so steeped in genealogical and heraldic lore that they can bring to their intricate task of unravelment a 1 the zeal of a Scotland Yard expert oh a baffling crime case, and behind them, a staff of skilled and earnest “searchers” who probe for hours, nay, days, into the .ancient documents at the Public Record Office, British Museum, and, other depositories of historical archives to ensure that the smallest detail -in the lesser of the Peerages shall not blush for its veracity when it comes to be lodged between the uncompromising green covers. A truly portentous work, in which pertinacity of man and scruple ■ of !women —for one of the principal archivists of “The Complete Peerage,” of thirty years’ experience, is that—make undaunted conquests of facts in the confusing forests of palaeography extending far back to the Nor-

man Conquest. “The competent searcher,” Mr Doubleday continued, “must not only have been trained to read early documents, but to understand the full bearing and application of what they contain. One of our difficulties is that there are so many persons, held to have been hereditary -Peers according to modern IaAV, Avho as a matter of historical fact acquired by their writ of summons only the troublesome obligation of attending Parliament wherever

it might he held—a serious matter when there were few roads in the country. Of most of them practically nothing has been known hitherto, and as many of them- —like the Hastang family in the present volume —have the same name as other landholders in the district Avhence they were summoned to attend the King, their identity is difficult to disentangle. Hence the need for extensive searches. You may spend thousands of hours —and pounds —without tangible result if the field of search be not carefully considered, and directed.”

Unlike other Peerages, “The Complete Peerage” ventures on short biographical sketches of its subjects which are virtually judgments of character, largely draAvn from contemporary memoirs, diaries, etc. Perilous waters these, which have landed the editors in more than one controversy on the propriety of their truth-te'lling, and dreiv from Mr Doubleday the remark: “In certain quarters Ave are not popular.”

iA-t 31 guineas per volume, “The Complete Peerage’’ is still a big loss, and will remain so unless the number of subscribers is largely increased. 'Some £70,000 must have been spent on it up to date, most of it by the first editors, who have sought no return. The ideal patron, with a passion for genealogy as unlimited as his pu,rse, has yet to appear. The State, with the

oldest, the Mother of Parliaments, behind it, still does not think fit to support -what the British Academy, in the words of its president, the Earl of Balfour, describes as “a work of more than national importance. . . both a valuable contribution to historical scholarship and an almost indispensable tool for students of any period of British history.”

(Still, with imperative researches pendi&jg for lack of two or three thousand pounds, Mr Doubleday can only find it in liis heart to say: “I should be like a dog without a tail if I tried to relinquish this work.”