Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 9.djvu/625

 12 s. ix. DEC. 24, i92i.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 515 one of the usual inventions of pedigree- j makers. I believe that it was first put together by La Roque, " un historien peu scrupuleux," as Le Prevost calls him. At all events the ingenious pedigree is to be found in his massive ' Histoire Genealo- gique de la Maison de Harcourt ' (1662). 2. The three Harcourts alleged to have been | present at the battle of Hastings also seem I to be imaginary, for Le Prevost writes of the English Harcourts : Les genealogistes anglais leur ont fabrique une filiation apocryphe, afin de les faire arriver dans j ce pays des Fepoque de la conquete. A cet effet ils ont cree un Gervais, un Geoff roy et un Arnold de Harcourt, qu'ils presentent comme ayant assiste tous les trois a la bataille d'Hastings. (Wace, ' Roman de Rou,' ii. 266, note 3.) Blanche (honest but credulous) resented this assertion, but did not produce any proof that the trio existed. On the other hand, the French genealogists put forward, as the representative of the Harcourts at Hastings, a certain Errand de Harcourt, of whom Le Prevost remarks that he is " un personnage fort peu connu, et beau- coup moins authentique que son pere Anquetil et son frere Robert " (ibid.). Wace, the one authority for the presence of a Harcourt at the battle, states clearly that it was the " Sire de Herecort " who was there (ibid.), but does not mention his name. Of course, Wace's statements are to be taken with caution, as he did not begin that part of his poem dealing with the battle until more than a century after Hastings (cf. Round, ' Feudal England,' p. 407) ; and as he had to wonk from oral tradition it is not surprising that he makes some remarkable blunders. Thus he would have us believe that Roger de Beaumont took a leading part in the battle, although we know on the first-class authority of William of I Poitiers that Roger was in Normandy, 1 and it was his son Robert who fought at Hastings. " Richard de Beaumont " in the query must be a mistake, as the name Richard was not used by this family of Beaumont. The alleged connexion of the Harcourts j with the Conqueror through the Beaumonts may also be dismissed as mythical. I suspect that it is based on a careless mis- reading of a passage in Robert de Torigny's continuation of William of Jumieges, where we are told that a sister of the Duchess Gunnor married Thorold de Pontaudemer, and that : " Hujus Turulfi f rater fuit Turchetillus, pater Anschetilli de Harecurt. Genuit autem ex eadem idem Turulfus Hunfridum de Vetulis, patrem Rogerii de Bello Monte" (Guillaume de Jumieges, ed. Marx, 1914, p. 324). It will be seen that this implies, not that Anschetil de Harcourt was related to the descendants of Gunnor, but that Roger de Beaumont was related to them on one side and to- Anschetil on another. But, as M. Marx observes : *- Quant a ce Turquetil pere d' Anquetil de Harcourt nous ne savons rien de lui. La valeur de ces genealogies, quand elles ne sont pas corro- borees par un texte d'Orderic Vital ou par une charte, est toujours un peu suspecte. Writing in the twelfth century, from family traditions no longer to be relied on, Robert de Torigny cannot be trusted implicitly. Some of his genealogies seem to be quite correct, some are certainly wrong, others it is impossible to verify, so that we are left in exasperating uncertainty as to how much credit should be given to them (cf. my article, ' The Sisters and Nieces of Gunnor, Duchess of Normandy,' in The Genealogist,, October. 1920, and January, 1921). 3. According to La Roque, Errand de Har- court died without issue, and the English Harcourts descended from a cadet who attached himself to King John and settled in England. But this is all wrong again, as the Hprcourts are found in England at a much earlier date. Their ancestor seems to be a certain Anschetil de Harcourt, whose name (as Dr. Round points out) occurs on the Pipe Roll of 11 30 and amongst the witnesses to a charter (probably temp. Stephen) of Roger, second Earl of Warwick (Ancestor, xi. 153-5). His Christian name suggests that he was connected with the Norman family, but proof is wanting. But apparently the English house could claim the rare distinction of a genuine male descent from the twelfth century, and genealogists will regret that a family of such extreme antiquity has become extinct in the male line. G. H. WHITE. 23, Weighton Road, Anerley. DICKENS: PAGE-HEADINGS (12 S. ix. 208). The following extract from Mr; Arthur Waugh's Introduction to the volume of ' Collected Papers ' in the " biographical " edition of Dickens' s works may partly answer R. DAKTLE'S query : The Charles Dickens Edition, in which so many of us first learnt to know our Dickens, was revised by the author during the last years of his life. To it he added the descriptive head- lines which have since been preserved in other