Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 8.djvu/313

 10 s. VIIL SKPT. 28, loo:.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

259

NOTES ON BOOKS, &o.

History and Record* of the Smith- Car ington Family.

Edited by Walter Arthur Copinger. (Sotheran

&Co.)

IN the early part of the seventeenth century there lived at Cropwell Butler, in the county of Notting- ham a respectable yeoman of the name of John Smith, who died in 1642, leaving his property to be divided between his wife and his eldest son Thomas. Thomas Smith entered into business as a mercer at Nottingham, added in course of time to the family r>ropertv, ar >d became an ancestor. A numerous line of descendants have participated with merited success in the honours which wait on those who win their spurs in the two great aims of English- men-trade and politics, .No banking house has maintained a higher position than that oi Smith, Pavne & Smith ; no peerages are more worthily held than that of Carrington. To an outsider it would have seemed that a family possessing such credentials would be content to rest its fame upon the qualities which have enabled it to attain the dignified position which it has long held in public ^stimation ; but a malignant fate has otherwise decreed A Norman ancestry was necessary to complete its satisfaction, and a Norman ancestry

ut has handed down a story

that about the year 1404 a certain John Carington an aleddescendantofHamodeCarenton,ofCarington fn Cheshire, having been a strong adherent of King Richard if was compelled, through fear of that successor, to flee the country, and while

HIP name and arms of Smith, inac uiis legenu, which rests on no historical basis, and which seems to have owed its origin to the fanciful imagination heralds, became an article of

which was borne in ^cession j^fwofM^W

by e Mr "Robert 'smith, a membe?of the Butler branch of the family, who was Carrington in the, Kngdoo. of Ire-

sn

C^rrtngton, which in 1880 was changed into Cng of the Board of Agriculture does

this DOOK .J n " Richard Smith, an eminent

them, and relegated to an appendix a considerable mass that did not immediately bear on the history of the family.

Dr. Copinger has imfortunately adopted an un- usual method of drawing up his genealogical scheme. Instead of tracing each branch by lineal descent, he has marked each generation by a letter of the alphabet, and each person belonging to that genera- tion by a number, and has dealt with these indi- viduals in numerical succession. Such a method would in any case enhance the difficulty expe- rienced by the inquirer in verifying descents, but with an unwieldy volume like this 'History' the labour thrown upon the reader is excessive. Setting asMe the Carington details, in which the mythical element plays a considerable part, we may assert with confidence that Dr. Copinger has not proved his case. The descent of Mr. Smith - Carington is faulty because there is no proof that Robert Smith, his alleged ancestor, was the seventh son of Thomas Smith of Charley, co. Leicester. That of Lord Carrington is equally defective because there is no- proof that John Smith of Cromwell Butler was the son of William Smith of Cressing Temple in Essex. John Smith is said to have been born between 1595 and 1600, but there are apparently no Smith entries in the baptismal register of White Notley (Cressing Temple) after 1584. We do not wish to slur over the fact that the Smith-Carington descent has been registered in the College of Arms, but we should like to see the evidences which are wanting in Dr. Copinger's ' History.' If the Heralds' Office can fill up the lacunae to which we have adverted from parish registers, wills, marriage settlements, and other authentic sources of information, we shall be well pleased.

The book is accompanied by a large chart pedigree, contained in a separate portfolio. For the later generations of the family this pedigree is of value, and it also includes several well-known personages who have been omitted from the 'History,' possibly because they have not cared to indicate in their names the Carington descent. Amongst these are Mr. Abel Henry Smith, M.P. for Hertford ; Sir Gerard Smith, late Governor of West Australia ; and the distinguished officer who has recently been selected to succeed Sir John French in command of the troops at Aldershot. The volume is also well illustrated by numerous pedigrees of allied houses, and by portraits, views, and representations of sepulchral monuments. If it could have been pro- duced on a smaller scale, and a large amount of irrelevant matter could have been excluded, we think its value, from the reader's point of view, would not have been diminished. An index also, in a work of this kind, is almost a necessity.

The Life and Time* of Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland. By J. A. R. Marriott. (Methuen & Co.)

AFTER the great Civil War came to an end and the Protectorate had vanished like a dream, though Charles II. had been restored without conditions, it was impossible that the old state of things could ever be brought back. The past was dead, and men were content to live in an unwholesome present, with less regard for the past or the future than has been the case at any other period of English his- tory. The instinct for history was almost dead. When the historical sense revived, Hume and Carte took the place once occupied by the old