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 THE ANCESTOR 233 from the place of Walpole being of no value as evidence, though in all probability they came from Henry de Walpole of Walpole, temp. Henry II/ Mr. Rye's name reminds us of his merciless exposure of that gorgeous concoction, the descent of the obscure Norfolk Stewards from the * Royal Stuarts ' of Scotland. In spite of the prominence given to this imposture by Mr. Round's further criticisms in the course of last year, we were startled to find an article in the Christmas number of another leading weekly on ^ the origin of some peculiar coats of arms,' by no less exalted an authority than Ulster King-of-arms, in which the coat of this family was depicted and the weU-known forged grant by Charles VI. of France accepted as genuine 1 Charles VI. King of France, in 1385, to Alexander Stewart especially for the good deeds of his father Andrew Stewart, who, " by main force of club and sword in the field of battle, drove out of the double tressure of Scotland the false and vile usurper and coward lion of Balliol, and brought back the Crown of Scotland to its true and right royal head." ' It is of this grant by the French king that M. Michel, the French historian cited by Mr. Rye, wrote : ' it is enough to cast the eye on these pretended letters of concession to recognize the patois of an Englishman little familiar with the language spoken at Paris at the end of the fourteenth century.' And yet this ' honourable augmentation ' to the family arms is duly spoken of as genuine in the current issues both of Burke and of Debrett, Such alleged ' augmentations ' as this, we may observe, are often associated with false tradition and tend to perpetuate error. A paper which professes to chronicle Court news informed its readers last February that Sir Trevor Chichele Plowden ' traces his descent from the ancient family of Plow- dens of Plowden in Shropshire, where they were seated evidently some time before the earliest record. A Plowden fought at the siege of Acre in 1 1 94, and there received the augmentation of the fieurs-de-lys borne ever since by his descendants.' For the truth about the early history of an old Shropshire family we should turn, of course, to Mr. Eyton, who, in his Shropshire (xi. 219) mentions 'a tradition
 * These arms, it appears, were granted,' Ulster writes, 'by