Considering the vast number of individuals who in the course of a few ages proceed from a common parent, and taking into account the mutations to which families are subject, it is not surprising that the "high" are often found to be "descended from the low, and, contrariwise, the low from the high." I know a comparatively obscure country gentleman who can (by the most undeniable evidences) prove his descent through three different lines from William the Conqueror, and consequently from the Northman Rollo, the founder of the duchy of Normandy in the tenth century. Two hundred years ago we find some descendants of the line of the Paleologi, emperors of the East, residing in privacy in the little village of Landulph, in Cornwall. In the church of that place there is a small monument to the memory of "Theodoro Paleologus, of Pesaro in Italye, descended from y{e} imperial line of y{e} late Christian emperors of Greece, being the sonne of Camilio, the son of Prosper, the sonne of Theodoro, the sonne of John, y{e} sonne of Thomas, second brother of Constantine Paleologus, the 8th of that name, and last of y{t} line y{t} rayned in Constantinople until subdved by the Turks; who married w{t}. Mary, y{e} daughter of William Balls, of Hadlye in Souffolke, Gent., and had issue 5 children, Theodoro, John, Ferdinando, Maria, and Dorothy, and departed this life at Clyfton, y{e} 21st. of Janu. 1636." Some female descendants of this individual married persons of humble condition in the immediate vicinity of Landulph, and hence, as Mr. Gilbert observes, the imperial blood may still flow in the veins of the bargemen of Cargreen![308] On the other hand, many of our peers descend from tradesmen, and other persons of plebeian condition. Not to meddle with the pedigrees of some of our _Novi Domini_, the earl of Dartmouth descends from a worthy London skinner of the fourteenth century; the earl of Coventry from a mercer of the fifteenth; and Lord Dudley from a goldsmith of the seventeenth. "Genealogy," says Sir Egerton Brydges, "is of little value, unless it discloses matter which teaches the causes of the decay or prosperity of families, and furnishes a lesson of moral wisdom for the direction of those who succeed. When we reflect how soon the fortunes of a house are ruined, not only by vice or folly, but by the least deficience in that cold prudence with which highly endowed minds are so seldom gifted, the long continuance of any race of nobility or gentry seems to take place almost in defiance of probabilities."[309] Persons not conversant with antiquarian researches often express surprise at the possibility of tracing the annals of a family through the long period of five, six, or seven centuries. It may therefore be interesting to mention the principal sources from which genealogical materials are derived.