More Problems with Pole

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Douglas Richardson

More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Douglas Richardson » 04 des 2004 08:51:08

Dear Newsgroup ~

In his usual two step shuffle, Mr. Farmerie has demonstrated once
again his inexperience with proper source citation and evaluation of
source materials. This past week he posted two royal descents from
King John, without any documentation, qualification, or comment. RED
FLAG! Upon requesting his primary evidence, we are told he has none.
RED FLAG! Rather, he says he has based the two descents in question
on material found in William Pole's book, Collections towards a
history of the county of Devonshire, published in 1791. RED FLAG!

In response, I posted one paragraph from William Pole's book regarding
the Tracy family which material I showed was studded with errors. The
example was posted to demonstrate the need to employ primary evidence
when confronted with an unreliable secondary source such as Pole.

This past week, purely by chance, I encountered yet another discussion
of Pole's work in the scholarly journal, Report & Transactions of the
Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature, &
Art, 34 (1902): 729. In an article entitled '"Domesday"
Identifications,' the author states the following:

"William de Braose's fees amounted to 28 in 1166, and are distinctly
said to be held of the Honour of Barnstaple. At the same time Oliver
de Tracy's amounted to 23-1/2, the two together to 51-1/2. It is
therefore difficult to see how, as is alleged by Sir W. Pole, p. 13,
William de Tracy's fees numbering 28-1/4 can have belonged to the
barony of Barnstaple, seeing that the whole barony of Barnstaple
seventy-five years later only counted 56 fees. Indeed, the authority
which Pole quotes, p. 14 (Abbrev. Placit., 6 Rich. I. Devon Michaelmas
Rot. 5), William de Brewes petit versus Oliverum de Tracy ut teneat
finem suam de mediateate baronie de Barnstaple, shows that there were
only two moieties, viz., those held by William de Braose and Oliver de
Tracy respectively." END OF QUOTE.

We see here that the author has displayed the appropriate caution
towards Pole's work. Moreover, he has bothered to check Pole's stated
source and found Pole to be completely wrong. This is good history
research. Comparison, Analysis, Validation, and Fact Checking. This
is the kind of research we should all be doing.

I will repeat my earlier comments about Sir William Pole from my
previous post for emphasis:

"Given the serious flaws in Pole's account of the Tracy family, I find
it difficult to accept anything he says on ANY family without primary
evidence to back up his statements. Using secondary sources is
acceptable when the source is found to be reliable. However, when the
source has been found to be tainted by multiple errors such as Pole,
the source should be used with great caution and only in conjuction
with primary evidence found in original records."

Spencer - Do you have any comments on this?

Best always, Douglas Richardson, Salt Lake City, Utah

Website: http://www.royalancestry.net

Todd A. Farmerie

Re: More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Todd A. Farmerie » 04 des 2004 22:33:05

[childishness removed]

Doug,

Thank you for your sanctimonious, irrelevant and petty post.

Douglas Richardson wrote:

In response, I posted one paragraph from William Pole's book regarding
the Tracy family which material I showed was studded with errors. The
example was posted to demonstrate the need to employ primary evidence
when confronted with an unreliable secondary source such as Pole.

[. . . as opposed, it would seem, with no such need for primary evidence
when citing the equally unreliable Vivian, who actually says something
entirely different than the relationship he is being cited to support?]

You must have missed Nat's post, wherein you could have learned
something about how scholars use secondary sources.

Anyhow, as to the descents in question (Champernoun, not Tracy), we have
been discussing them. Do you have anything useful to add, or are you
just going to lob rotten vegetables from the peanut gallery? Do you
think Pole invented the charter in question - made it up from thin air?
Do you think he could not read latin, and got confused over the word
for "sister"? How do you explain Pole's statement? Saying "he was
wrong about Tracy" is really not all that relevant to the issue at hand,
as Nat explained.

taf

Douglas Richardson

Re: More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Douglas Richardson » 06 des 2004 06:04:59

Dear Todd ~

It boils down to this. Pole is a very flawed source. If you have no
primary evidence to support Pole, then you need to withdraw the two
Champernoun lines. It's as simple as that.

Do you have primary evidence, yes or no?

Douglas Richardson


"Todd A. Farmerie" <farmerie@interfold.com> wrote in message news:<41b22cc7@news.ColoState.EDU>...

Doug,

SNIP SNIP SNIP

Anyhow, as to the descents in question (Champernoun, not Tracy), we have
been discussing them. Do you have anything useful to add, or are you
just going to lob rotten vegetables from the peanut gallery? Do you
think Pole invented the charter in question - made it up from thin air?
Do you think he could not read latin, and got confused over the word
for "sister"? How do you explain Pole's statement? Saying "he was
wrong about Tracy" is really not all that relevant to the issue at hand,
as Nat explained.

taf

Todd A. Farmerie

Re: More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Todd A. Farmerie » 06 des 2004 07:40:06

Douglas Richardson wrote:
Dear Todd ~

(What, no thanks for my post?)

It boils down to this. Pole is a very flawed source.

(Sigh . . . .) It does _not_ boil down to this. Pole as a source needs
to be evaluated (as do most secondary sources) in two separate lights -
there are the writings of the antiquarian Pole with the conclusions he
reached, then there are the _primary documents_, since lost, that he
reports.

"Sir William Pole Collections towards a description of the county of
Devon (1791). Pole died in 1635 and most of his papers were destroyed in
the Civil War. While incomplete, this publication is valuable as it is
based on papers which have otherwise disappeared, but its interest is
almost exclusively genealogical."

http://www.devon.gov.uk/library/locstudy/history.html

(I would take issue with the last sentence - if nothing else, it is of
value as a sociological document - indicating how the early 17th century
gentry viewed their class.)

You have evaluated his ability in compiling descents, and applied it to
his ability to read latin and relate what he saw. Apples and oranges.
Thus, we are back to my questions - do you think he lied about the
charter? (Not do you think he misapplied it, not do you think the Tracy
pedigree is wrong, but do you think he lied about seeing the charter, or
what it said?) Do you think he could not read latin?

If you have no
primary evidence to support Pole, then you need to withdraw the two
Champernoun lines.

Then, based on this criterion, I await your withdrawal of the Holand
descent, for which you cited a single primary document that simply
stated that at some point in the past someone owed Robert Holand some
money. You admitted here yourself, at least by omission, that you have
no primary source that attests to the critical relationship - the best
you could do was use a second unsupported relationship to construct a
chronological argument in favor of the first unsupported relationship.
(I won't hold my breath waiting for you to act, though - instead of
living up to your own standard, you publicly gloated over perhaps having
guessed right, like the gambler playing roulette who always puts his
money on "Black", then considers himself a genius every time a black
number comes up.)

It's as simple as that.

If only. This whole drawn out event seems to have had more to do with
suppressing (and distracting peoples' attention from) criticism of your
book than with the pure scholarly motives you pretend to profess.

Do you have primary evidence, yes or no?

Again, I can't help but notice two things. First, your act on this
question has been that of a one trick pony. You have been invited to
discuss the actual issue several times, but you just keep going back to
this "yes or no" as if simply repeating the same question represents
discussion.

Secondly, you keep failing to notice (and perhaps you hope others will
likewise fail to notice) that by your own prime criterion, repeated _ad
nauseum_, the Holand line you presented in your book fails abysmally.
It is hypocritical of you to hold others to a higher standard than that
to which you hold yourself. And that doesn't even take into account the
inherent difference between an internet discussion group and a published
"scholarly" book -

I haven't commented on this before, but it is unconscionable for you to
demand what can and cannot be posted to this group. The vast majority
of participants here have no access to primary sources, and many would
not be able to read and interpret them if they had access. To insist
that no one post anything without primary documentation can hardly be
viewed as anything less than an attempt to intimidate the majority of
participants into silence. This is a discussion group, meant for
_anyone_ interested in the topic, whatever their level, whatever their
sources. This was never intended to be a venue where one trained
historians and genealogist speaks _ex cathedra_ to the masses, free from
contradition or discussion. While as of late you have been using it in
exactly that manner, don't expect the rest of the participants to go
along. Let me state right here that in making this demand, Mr.
Richardson speaks for no one but himself (and of course, as above, he
fails to live up to his own standard - for example,
<2619efc9.0411271634.5266bb9@posting.google.com> where relationships are
presented, in Mr. Richardson's own words, "without any documentation,
qualification, or comment. RED FLAG!").

I again invite you to discuss the actual genealogical questions.

taf

Chris Phillips

Re: More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Chris Phillips » 06 des 2004 10:21:30

Todd A. Farmerie wrote:
You have evaluated his ability in compiling descents, and applied it to
his ability to read latin and relate what he saw. Apples and oranges.
Thus, we are back to my questions - do you think he lied about the
charter? (Not do you think he misapplied it, not do you think the Tracy
pedigree is wrong, but do you think he lied about seeing the charter, or
what it said?) Do you think he could not read latin?


To be fair to Pole, isn't there an obvious parallel with Dugdale, for
example?

Dugdale copied a lot of material that's since been lost. We know that he
could be fallible in synthesising material to produce pedigrees, but I don't
remember having seen it suggested that he was an incompetent transcriber.

Chris Phillips

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 06 des 2004 11:49:13

In message of 6 Dec, "Chris Phillips" <cgp@medievalgenealogy.org.uk> wrote:

Todd A. Farmerie wrote:
You have evaluated his ability in compiling descents, and applied
it to his ability to read latin and relate what he saw. Apples and
oranges. Thus, we are back to my questions - do you think he lied
about the charter? (Not do you think he misapplied it, not do you
think the Tracy pedigree is wrong, but do you think he lied about
seeing the charter, or what it said?) Do you think he could not
read latin?

To be fair to Pole, isn't there an obvious parallel with Dugdale, for
example?

Dugdale copied a lot of material that's since been lost. We know that
he could be fallible in synthesising material to produce pedigrees,
but I don't remember having seen it suggested that he was an
incompetent transcriber.

Apart from the Introduction to CP, Vol II. Though the editor did
concede that it might have been an assistant who did the
mis-trancribing.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe tim@powys.org
For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org

Chris Phillips

Re: More Problems with Pole

Legg inn av Chris Phillips » 06 des 2004 11:56:11

I wrote:
Dugdale copied a lot of material that's since been lost. We know that
he could be fallible in synthesising material to produce pedigrees,
but I don't remember having seen it suggested that he was an
incompetent transcriber.

Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:
Apart from the Introduction to CP, Vol II. Though the editor did
concede that it might have been an assistant who did the
mis-trancribing.


Sadly, I think that's more a question of downright fabrication in Dugdale's
lists of summonses to Parliament, rather than incompetence as a transcriber
(though it does mention mistakes and omissions before going on to the
downright fraud).

Chris Phillips

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