The Genealogical magazine. JULY, 1899. THE NEW ATHLONE PURSUIVANT OF ARMS. ITHIN the last few weeks Mr. John Edward Burke, Athlone Pursuivant of Arms, has resigned that office. He was the son of the late Sir John Bernard Burke, C.B., Ulster King of Arms, whose name is too well known for anything we might say to add to his fame. It has of late years been rather the fashion to overlook the immense debt the world owes to the Burke family, and to cavil in a depreciatory manner at the various genealogical and heraldic books of the late Ulster King of Arms. But such an idea comes from an utter misunderstanding of the standpoint of Sir Bernard Burke. Most people, because he was an officer of Arms, considered that his books were official, and therefore, when a mistake was found in them, immediately criticise his works. Sir Bernard Burke never put his books forward as official. The books, not being official, only consisted of pedigrees supplied by the families interested. The "Peerage," and we believe also the "Landed Gentry," were originally started by his father, the late John Burke, Esq. Both of these books were commenced and were carried on at a period when genealogy, outside the College and Officers of Arms, was merely considered an interesting sort of hobby, and at a time when the intensely critical spirit which now governs genealogical research had not been called into existence. Consequently, the pedigrees published were not always so scrupulously accurate as we expect a pedigree to be to-day. An ordinary book dies when it becomes out of-date; heraldic books do not. They are indexed, and referred to ages afterwards; and people are apt to forget that opinions differ at differing periods of time, that day by day facts come to light and records are made available which alter previously-accepted genealogies. The present generation, with its critical ideas, and in its proper pursuit of genealogical righteousness, are only too ready to forget the YUNG ROY UNG FOYUNG LOY debt they owe to Sir Bernard Burke; and they forget likewise that armory and genealogy of any sort were almost dead at the beginning and early part of this century, and that it is almost entirely due to the Burke family, and chiefly to the late Sir Bernard Burke, that the interest which we now find so widely spread concerning such matters was kept alive through a period of what would otherwise have been heraldic stagnation, and possibly armorial decease. The late Mr. John Burke, the original author of the "Peerage and Baronetage," was the first of the family to take up the subject; his eldest son, Mr. Serjeant Peter Burke, Q.C., was the author of some number of genealogical books; but the most illustrious member of the family was the late Ulster King of Arms, the second son. Of his sons, the eldest, Mr. Henry Farnham Burke, is the present Somerset Herald in the College of Arms. His second son was the late Mr. Bernard Louis Burke, Athlone Pursuivant of Arms, who died unmarried in the year 1892. The fourth son is the present Mr. Ashworth Burke, who is now acting as the editor of the "Landed Gentry." The sixth son is Mr. John Edward Burke, born in 1868, and in 1892, at the death of his elder brother, appointed Athlone Pursuivant of Arms, the office which he has recently resigned. He was engaged with the late Sir Bernard THE ARMS OF BURKE. Or, a cross gules, and in the first and fourth quarters, a lion rampant sable. Crest: A cat-amountain sejant guardant proper collared and chained or, on the breast a cross coupéd of the last. |