CROMVTELL NOT A SCOTSMAN.
[TO THE EDITOR 07 THE " SPECTATOR:1
SIR,—Mr. Harrison writes in your issue of December 3/st, 1910, to correct Mr. Lewis as to Cromwell's Welsh ancestry;
• may I be allowed to point out, however, that in doing so he • has himself fallen into a serious error ? The Welsh origin of the Cromwell family is apparently not in dispute, although the exact proportion of Welsh blood that flowed in their veins may be; but the Scots ancestry which Mr. Harrison claims for the Protector is certainly wholly fabulous. Mr. Round, writing on the "Origin of the Stewarts" in "Studies in Peerage and Family History," incidentally deals with the question of the Norfolk family of Steward from which Oliver Cromwell descended, and confirms the conclusion arrived at
• by Mr. Walter Rye in the Genealogist [N.S.}, IL, 34-42, that
• the "Stywards," as these alleged descendants of the Scottish Stuarts wrote their name, were simply a Norfolk family "of no credit or renown which had been settled at Swaffham long before the alleged Scottish ancestor is supposed to have landed in England with his Royal master and kinsman." No doubt the fact that Carlyle accepted the fable as authentic history partly accounts for its persistence.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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