Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/325



ITHER from family tradition or from the natural bent of the race many English families have taken to themselves a calling which they have handed down as though the following of it were an hereditary obligation upon their descendants. We have families of the robe and the surplice, families of the gun and the saddle, families of sailors, soldiers, and parliamentarians. Indeed, there have been occasions when the administration of government in this country has been in the hands of a band of kinsmen.

Some illustrations of these hereditary callings or pursuits will be given from time to time in The Ancestor and it may be hoped that they will represent an interesting side of popular genealogy.

Here we offer a chart pedigree of the soldiers of the family of Battye, a family sprung from Yorkshire yeomen, which in some three generations has bred a very Round Table of famous fighting men.

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