Background for Gilbert Keith Chesterton

IT IS USUAL to open a biography with some account of the subject's
ancestry. Chesterton, in his _Browning_, after some excellent foolery
about pedigree-hunting, makes the suggestion that middle-class
ancestry is far more varied and interesting than the ancestry of the
aristocrat:

The truth is that aristocrats exhibit less of the romance of
pedigree than any other people in the world. For since it is their
principle to marry only within their own class and mode of life,
there is no opportunity in their case for any of the more interesting
studies in heredity; they exhibit almost the unbroken uniformity of
the lower animals. It is in the middle classes that we find the
poetry of genealogy; it is the suburban grocer standing at his shop
door whom some wild dash of Eastern or Celtic blood may drive
suddenly to a whole holiday or a crime.

This may provide fun for a guessing game but is not very useful to a
biographer. The Chesterton family, like many another, had had the ups
and downs in social position that accompany the ups and downs of
fortune. Upon all this Edward Chesterton, Gilbert's father, as head
of the family possessed many interesting documents. After his death,
Gilbert's mother left his papers undisturbed. But when she died
Gilbert threw away, without examination, most of the contents of his
father's study, including all family records. Thus I cannot offer any
sort of family tree. But it is possible to show the kind of family
and the social atmosphere into which Gilbert Chesterton was born.

Some of the relatives say that the family hailed from the village of