HISTORICAL CHART AND NOTES

ON THE ORIGIN OF THE

BRITISH VICTORIAN MONARCHY.

BY R. DUPPA LLOYD, F.R. HIST.S.

It is probable that all general readers of history, and all those who are loyal to the principles of monarchy, may object to the published statement which was so conspicuously presented to the visitors to the Guelph Exhibition, and may wish to see dispelled the errors of genealogists who, in the words of Gibbon, "have spun" a pedigree degrading both to the Sovereignty and to the origin of the great family that is by far the most illustrious in its antiquity and ancestry of any existing European family. The researches of Muratori, Leibnitz, Eccard, Gibbon, Sismondi, and others, have shown, from the charters of Charlemagne, that the Bavarian Boniface, Count of Lucca, is the ancestor of the Marquises of Tuscany and of the D'Estes of Brunswick, for one line; but they have not clearly established the descent of two or three illustrious families which constitute the origin of the British Imperial House of Guelph.

It is, of course, generally known that the Brunswick family is the only representative of the ancient Welfen family, whose ancestors were probably derived from the Boii, the Heruli, or the Scyrii peoples. We find the names of Edecon and Orestes as ambassadors from Attila to the Court of Constantinople; and, at the death of Attila, the different nations and tribes that he had assembled mutually destroyed each other's national existence, and dispersed.

Among the peoples who had escaped from Pannonia, in a shattered condition, into Italy, were the Heruli and the Scyrii, with their princes or leaders,-Edecon, Odoacre, and Welfe or Wolfo, who engaged themselves as mercenaries to the Emperors of Rome at Ravenna. It is supposed that Count Warin of Altdorf, whose son Isenbart saved the life of Charlemagne, was descended either

from Odoacre or Wolfo, or from both, who were chiefs of the Scyrii, a Bavarian Celtic people (the probable origin of the Guelphs), who were certainly not of a Saxon or Teutonic race.

The assertion that the origin of the Guelphs can be traced to Pharamond, who probably never existed, is entirely fallacious, as there is no trace wheresoever of the Guelphs being descended from any of the Merovian Teutonic Franks.

The ancient male line of Welfs had, before the time of Charlemagne, assumed the Byzantine title of Bavarian Counts of Altdorf. Warin and his son Isenbart were the most powerful allies of Charlemagne in his conquests over the Bavarians and the Lombards. Isenbart married the sister or sister-in-law of Charlemagne, and had numerous sons. One son, Eticho, held the great fiefs and Allods of the Welfens, and dwelt in retirement in an ancient Allod, independent of the Empire, at Altdorf, on the Bodensee. He was the father of the Empress Judith, the mother of Charles le Chauve, Emperor of the western Carlovingian Franks, from whom the French derived the first elements of their nationality.

Another son of Isenbart was created or retained to the ancient Lombard or Gothic Dukedom of Spoleto; and most probably another son was appointed to the Marquisate of Tuscany, which was created by Charlemagne in 813, and became the first Marquis Boniface. Gibbon supposes that this Marquis was one of the Welfen nephews of Charlemagne, and the name Boniface was assumed at the time of his father's conversion to Christianity by the British St. Boniface, Archbishop of Mayence, the spiritual chief of the Bavarian and Burgundian states, tribes, and peoples.

The three branches of the Bavarian Welfen family were, in after ages, united by the marriage of Alberto Azzo, who was directly descended from Charlemagne's eldest son, Pepin, King of Italy, by the marriage of his daughter Adelaide with Guido, Duke of Spoleto, whose son Guido and grandson Lambert became Kings of Italy and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Alberto Azzo's grandfather, Oberto II, who was himself grandson of Guido, Duke of Tuscany, Marquis of Camerino and Spo