On 27/05/16 03:44, joecook@gmail.com wrote: > The scope seems enormous. Clearly true, but an enormous scope needn't render the project unattainable. There are plenty of examples of ambitious projects that have succeed against the odds; obviously there are lots more examples that haven't succeeded, but if these things are never tried, they can never succeed. > How long did it take to author "Burke's Landed Gentry"? Twenty > years? And it is still full of errors. Very true, however BLG was not a particularly collaborative effort, and it's scope was considerably larger than what Richard Carruthers is proposing. The majority of families in BLG (at least based on the random sample I've just taken) were either nouveau riche or cadet branches of older landed families whose distinct published ancestry did not extend back to the period discussed here. Many of the errors in BLG seemingly derive from false information supplied by the families themselves. > The Henry Project must be going on more than ten years now and is > not yet complete despite an extremely more limited scope. Again, it's not an especially collaborative project: it's just two people, and there's no suggestion that they're seeking additional collaborators. Nor should they if they're happy with the current arrangements. It may not be "complete", whatever that means, but it's the most thorough treatment on the subject I'm familiar with. If Richard's proposed project were even half as "complete" as the Henry Project, I'd regard that as a success. In any case, the ancestry of Henry II is a much more specialist subject than the Tudor and late mediaeval gentry. There will be many keen amateurs with a good working knowledge of particular groups of 15th and 16th century families, and who could if so inclined make a meaningful contribution to the subject. This is much less true for the ancestors of Henry II. However, don't get me wrong: I'm not saying the project is anything other than enormous, or that it is going to be easy progress; rather, I'm suggesting that the obstacles to it, while not inconsiderable, are potentially surmountable with forethought. Richard