The Spurgeon Family. By W. Miller Higgs. (Elliot Stock. 6s.
net.)—Mr. Higgs has taken a world of pains in tracing the descent of the family of the Spurgeons of Halstead. Its antiquity is more than respectable, even if it does not go back as much as four centuries and a half. The chain is not absolutely perfect in its earlier part. The witnesses to a deed of 1465 who sign them- selves "John Spirjoa" and "Thomas Spirjon " are only conjec- turally claimed. About the middle of the next century we find Spurgeons at Halstead. A Richard Spurgeon held land there in 1551, and Mr. Higgs writes that "the probability is that this Richard was the direct ancestor of Charles• Haddon Spurgeon." He knows, of course, that "probability" is not a favourite word with genealogists. But we are now near to firm ground. In 1566 a certain John Spurgeon of Halstead married Joan Wangford and had, among other children, a son Vincent: Vincent had a son Clement; of Clements there were seven generations ; the last of the seven (as far as this particular descent is concerned) had a son James ; this James had a son John, and John's eldest son was the famous preacher, Charles Haddon. The father survived till the year 1902. The notable thing about this descent is the long residence of the family in one neighbourhood. This cannot be called frequent, even when there is the retaining force of settled property. But in this case there does not seem to have been even a continuous tenancy of property. Is it fanciful to infer a certain sturdiness and tenacity of character from a fact so un- usual ? Many admirers of the great preacher will be interested in these particulars of his descent. The book, we may add, is being sold for the benefit of the Stockwell Orphanage and the poor of Halstead.
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