ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the phenomenon of the exaltation of ancestry, and its public expression on tomb monuments, through three case studies of individuals and families who took their dedication to a higher pitch of zealotry and obsession than most. The three are John, Lord Lumley, whose pride in family and failure to provide an heir impelled him to commission both pedigrees and a breathtakingly ambitious sequence of monuments in Surrey and County Durham; the Carews of Devon, whose campaign to recover their ancestral estates in Ireland was infused with genealogical research and promotion, and the erection of heraldically flamboyant monuments to the members of what was in truth a failing line; and Sir Edward Dering of Kent, whose determination to provide himself with a more venerable lineage than he in fact possessed drove him to modify and fabricate both muniments and monuments.
