Five Centuries in One Hour and Five Meters: The Pedigree Roll of the Darell Family of England as a Bank of Evidence (1637)

Five Centuries in One Hour and Five Meters:

The Pedigree Roll of the Darell Family of England as a Bank of Evidence (1637)

By Dr. Nathaniel (Nati) Nagar

The Scriveners’ Lecture

Coats of arms were intended, among other things, to showcase the status of a noble in a variety of ways: on buildings, on funeral monuments, on dishes, and even on gutters. The pinnacle of the show-off is an elaborate heraldic family tree: A nobleman who could afford it, would commission a heraldic artist to draw a fine genealogical tree for him on a parchment.

At first, in the fifteenth century, family trees were designed in basic drawing, sometimes without any arms. From the sixteenth century onwards, impressive family trees were produced – whether in the form of a roll or of a book. They included names, family connections, sometimes figures, and of course coats of arms.

In this lecture, I will talk about a family tree of the Darrell family, which arrived in the eleventh century from Normandy, settled first in Yorkshire, and then spread throughout southern England. In 1637, Robert Darrell, the head of the senior branch of the Darells commissioned a family tree that presents his family over about 500 years. The special about this roll is that right from the planning stage it was intended to serve as a platform for evidence that proves the ancient origin of the family and its right to bear arms and crest.