It is fifteen years, half a generation as genealogists are said to reckon time, since the last complete edition of BURKE's LANDED GENTRY was issued in 1921, for the edition of 1925 was a reprint of its predecessor with a supplement containing a number of new articles but only the most important corrections, referring to successions to estates and a few other domestic events, towards bringing the great bulk of the volume up to date. This Centenary Edition, therefore, has to cover the alterations of fifteen years in the ownership of estates, and the births, marriages and deaths of the members of the families recorded, as well as the promotions, retirements, honours and appointments in the various Services and in civil life which affect them. An attempt has been made to increase the value of the articles by recording interesting episodes of family history, by including the names of the places of education of members of families and, where possible, by carrying pedigrees a little further back. Care has been taken to verify descents and relationships in order to establish the connection between cadet branches and the main line, cross references in the case of marriages are more abundant than in previous editions and it is believed that no Arms are either blazoned or illustrated except in those cases where a grant, a Visitation recognition, a confirmation or a matriculation by one or other of the Heraldic Authorities of the three Kingdoms can he traced. In the course of verifying the Heraldry in the Centenary Edition it was found that many of the older families had no objection to the insertion of the dates of grants of Arms or of Visitation recognitions affecting themselves, or of grants of crests, although these were often acquired at a later period. In the case of families in Scotland, where no one except the heir male of a grantee is legally entitled to succeed to a Coat of Arms and the younger son, even of a Duke, inherits no more than the right to apply for a matriculation whereby the Lord Lyon King of Arms accords him the right to bear his father's shield with a suitable difference, and Heads of Families often matriculate in order to record the acquisition of new quarterings or to establish their succession as Chiefs of Clans, or of Families, or as Chieftains, the dates of these periodical compliances with the relevant Acts of Parliament have been freely given.

In many instances the earlier portions of the pedigrees of families of long descent have been checked in the light of the valuable books on family history which have been published since the appearance of the Edition of 1921 and in this connexion the Editor wishes to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the Complete Peerage. The exhaustive treatment of the mediaeval Earldoms and Baronies by writ in this great work has made it possible to recast the earlier portions of the Lineage of some of those ancient families which at one time were represented in the House of Lords, hut now, owing to the fact that the succession to early Peerage dignities was not confined to heirs male, find themselves among the Landed Gentry. The operation of economic causes has weighed heavily on the Landed Gentry and in an unhappily large number of cases families in the Centenary Edition have to he described as "formerly of" properties with which, in some instances, they had been associated for generations until the demands of the Chancellor of the Exchequer put an end to the connexion. The exclusion of such families on the ground that they were less widely-landed than of old, or even landless, would have detracted seriously from the value of the book as being a record of the history and inter-relationship of what was, and still is, an important class, and would have left a serious gap in the matrimonial cross-references from the accounts of those families which still retain their land. Furthermore it should be remembered that in Scotland the ownership of a seat or mansion alone may still carry with it the feudal "superiority" (as distinct from "property") over a wide area. In view of this some families which had been omitted from previous editions because of the loss of their properties now reappear as "formerly of" estates which in some cases serve as the qualification of other families newly admitted to these pages. In one or two instances a turn of Fortune's Wheel has enabled families to recover ancestral properties after long periods of separation. In preparing the Centenary Edition, the Editor has had the enthusiastic assistance of members of an unexpectedly large number of families, scholars who have taken an immense amount of trouble to enrich their own genealogies with evidence from the great wealth of public records with which this country is fortunately endowed and have often contributed towards the improvement of those of other families; but it must be confessed that the value of the volume as a work of historical reference would have been enhanced had more families possessed similarly industrious and well-informed members to take a pride in examining the chronicles of their ancestors.

Attempts have been made to improve the articles on Scottish families. The Editor's predecessors were content to accord a severely simple treatment to the genealogies of the Landed Gentry of Scotland, perhaps because their lands were so distant and family history in Scotland is sometimes confusing and intricate owing to the need for differentiating between the bearers of a comparatively small range of surnames who often had the same Christian names as their fathers. In the new Edition Lairds have been regularly associated with the names of their estates and have been numbered serially as owners of those properties. This treatment, which ensures identification, comes naturally to a Scotsman; but was not generally followed by his Irish, Welsh and English predecessors in the editorial chair. In the same way, in the case of Scottish families, the style officially adopted in Scotland has been followed so that the name of an estate comes immediately after the surname of its owner, as if forming part of it (as indeed it legally can), and before the letters used to indicate any honours or distinctions which may have been conferred on the Laird. Where women have succeeded a Laird in the ownership of a Scottish estate they are, in virtue of ancient usage, styled "Lady" there of, and are numbered serially in the same succession with the male proprietors. Thus a 9th Laird may be succeeded by the 10th Lady, and she, in turn, by the 11th Laird. Indeed in some parts of Scotland, custom still accords the courtesy style of "Lady" to the wife of a Laird and she is usually described as "Lady –" from the name of her husband's estate, and as such she is generally described in old records and writings. The style "X – of Y-" (no comma precedes the "of") is still regularly used by a Laird, by his wife, and daughters and also, with the prefix "Younger," by his eldest son, and being a matter of recognized legal right is, whenever asserted, admitted in official documents and public records as well as in ordinary social usage, and a statutory form of signature is provided. It may be pointed out that it has been authoritatively ruled that in Scotland the addition of the word "Esquire" to the style of a Laird who is properly designated by the name of his estate is as redundant upon an envelope as it is considered to be in England in describing officers in the higher ranks of the Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force.

During the preparation of this new Edition the Editor has received much valuable assistance and advice from His Majesty's Officers of Arms in all three Kingdoms and would like to express his gratitude for their help so generously given. He is also very grateful for the immense amount of information put at his disposal by other expert historians and genealogists for the revision and improvement of old articles and for the compilation of new ones. Some of these helpers, such as Sir Joseph Bradney and Captain Herbert Campbell, have not survived to see the volume in which they took so kindly and critical an interest. To Mr. T. A. C. Attwood, Dr. J. M. Bulloch, Mr. J. Cuninghame-Durham, Mr. H. A. Doubleday, Mr. J. C. R. Foulerton, Dr. C. A. H. Franklyn, Mr. R. M. Glencross, Mr. T. A. Glenn, Mr. R. Griffin, Mr. W. T. J. Gun, Professor Magnus Maclean, Mrs. Robertson Matheson, Mr. Cregoe Nicholson, Mr. Alister Tayler, Miss Henrietta Tayler, Mr. T. R. Thomson, and Major Duncan Warrand the Editor is happily still able to express his heartfelt thanks. Finally he takes this opportunity to record his gratitude to his Editorial Assistants and particularly to Mr. J. W. Smallshaw and Mr. F. E. Bamberger for the invaluable work done by them for the Centenary Edition during the five years of its preparation.

If, as a result of all the help which has been accorded to him the Editor has been able to produce an edition which is an improvement on its predecessors and has been able to satisfy some families with the treatment accorded to their past history and present ramifications, no one is more fully, and regretfully, aware that owing to lack of information about them the lineages of other families have been less satisfactorily recorded, as even in the course of nearly five years of preparation time has not been available to accumulate all the information required to chronicle them as perhaps they deserve, or to trace cadet branches as fully as might have been desirable to their members.

In conclusion the Editor wishes to remind his readers that while the Centenary Edition provides a conspectus of the relationships and inter-relationships, and of the honours and appointments of the Landed Gentry, and also of their various alliances with the families of Peers and Baronets as they were in the middle of 1936, it does not pretend to be more than a historical account of the genealogy of the Landed Gentry brought as nearly up to date as is possible. Those, therefore, who require to keep abreast of the unceasing stream of changes wrought among the Landed Gentry by the passage of time, are recommended to consult the annual editions of Kelly's HANDBOOK OF THE TITLED, LANDED AND OFFICIAL CLASSES, or WHO'S WHO, or the CATHOLIC WHO'S WHO, and the KNIGHTAGES and COMPANIONAGES, issued every year with the PEERAGES of Burke and Debrett until the time comes for a 16th Edition of BURKE'S LANDED GENTRY to make its appearance several years hence.