14 MAY 1942, Page 13

— I have just read the letter of " A Berkshire

Curate." May I, as a try rector of many years' experience, add my witness to his ny? There is hardly anything to which country people of all ees more readily pay deference and respect than to ancient lineage titles. Sir Robert Greig may do well to remember that, as the late

A. C. Fox-Davies, the heraldic expert, said, ancient gentility is more honourable than a modern title. Will it not be good to leave the matter by recalling the wise words of a famous eighteenth-century statesman— I think it was Burke—who asserted that where in a new country titles were not established he would not introduce them, and in an old country he would not abolish them?—Yours, &c., WILLIAM HENRY WYNNE.

The Rectory, Wapley, Chipping Sodbury, Bristol.