Visitation of Lancashire, 1567 - John Houghton's Family History Pages

Vi Introduction.
1584 and 1585, in the library at Knowsley,9 and although
it does not include all the pedigrees recorded by Glover,
it seems, as far as it extends, to be an accurate transcript,
but there are found the same interpolations and subsequent
additions as in the Chetham library MS., and made, not
improbably, by the same hand.
Dr. Pegge had a copy of Glover's Visitation oj'Derbyshire
"improved by Smith," but it was not a faithful
reproduction of the visiting herald. 10
It is not known when this visitation of the county of
Lancaster commenced, how long it continued, nor where
the heralds held their courts. Three hundred years ago
the age of chivalry had not passed away, and a good
proportion of the heads of the old feudal families answered
the summons and treated the office of the king of arms
with becoming respect. In 1533 only 47 of the county
families were recognized and passed the scrutiny of the
visitation, II whereas in 1567 we find that I 12 proved
their claim to heraldic rank and gentilitial distinction.
Milles, the learned antiquary, speaks of his uncle
Glover's "singular method and order,"I2 and yet there
seems to be a singular want of both in the arrangement
of his genealogies. The pedigrees are not entered
alphabetically, nor are they classified according either to
the ecclesiastical or civil divisions of the county, nor has
9 ellse 31, folio, pp. 82. 10 Noble's H ist. Coil. Arms, p. 248.
11 Chef/tam Jjlfiscdlallies, vol. i.; Herald. Visit., p. I4.
12 Gent. jJfag. , vol. xc. part i. p. 595.
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hztroductimz. Vll
any method been observed in their arrangement. There
is' an indiscriminate enumeration of families and the
earlier collaterals are generally omitted. There is also
an absence of that minute information found in subsequent
visitations, and which has long been considered
one of the principal merits in the genealogical illustration
of family succession and descent. If the heralds considered
accuracy and research of importance it was
necessary that they should also be so regarded by country
gentlemen, many of whom in the sixteenth century, and
in every other century both before and since, had no
special taste for the investigation of their descent or for
the elucidation of their lineage. They alone could supply
authentic facts, registers and monuments, and if these
were not supplied the heralds were not to blame. It is
obvious however, that some contemporaneous information
might have been easily obtained by these professional
functionaries which would have enlarged our local family
knowledge, but which they failed to secure, and which is
now irretrievably lost. Baptismal, nuptial, and funeral
dates are all very generally omitted by them.
The clergy at this time seem to have been totally indifferent
about preserving the distinctions of rank, although
among the many" hewers of wood and drawers of water,"
each of the old families had undoubtedly given a clerk to
the church. It was an age of zeal, persecution and piety,.
and the more disting uished ecclesiastics, being puritans r
would regard heraldry as an evidence of ostentation, and