On 04-Sep-17 6:08 AM, taf wrote: > On Sunday, September 3, 2017 at 11:57:00 AM UTC-7, Paulo Canedo wrote: > >> Ruvigny said ´with some few exceptions, [no royally descended families] have >> descended to or are at least traceable among the trading or labouring >> classes`. > While adding the 'at least traceable' in there helps, it was still just cultural chauvinism. In the US alone there would have been hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of traceable descendants of Edward III at the time he wrote this, and though this may not have applied to the majority of those who bothered do the tracing, the majority of those with a traceable descent would have been of the 'trading and labouring' classes (unless you use an arbitrary definition whereby owning any land or house made one 'gentry', despite the fact you earned your keep by labor). > > Even in England, I suspect that this represents a failure to appreciate the social mobility among the trades, military, lower-gentry and clergy that would have left traceable lines if anyone set aside their social prejudice long enough to look. The apprenticeship records of the London livery companies are full of younger sons of gentry being apprenticed into the trades, and not all of them did well enough to go back and acquire lands in the country, as some did. 'Cultural chauvinism' is a neat way to put it - snobbish pomposity would also fit. The locution itself is stilted to the point of absurdity - 'descended to or at least traceable' in view of de Ruvigny's methodology could largely mean that the great unwashed did not often present themselves to heralds making visitations. If he had actively gone looking for descents through 'gentlemen' who went bankrupt or insane (for starters) he might have had a different impression. One corrective aspect to this can be seen by glancing at Gerald Paget's work on the ancestors of Prince Charles - through his maternal grandmother, a queen-empress consort no less - he has ancestors among the 'trading or labouring classes' and/or who are untraceable. Ergo, intermarriage between social strata happened. It would be a stunning result if this could not be reflected in the obverse way, through descendants of royalty marrying 'down' the socio-economic scale rather than just their ancestors marrying 'up'. Peter Stewart