Talk:John Giffard (1602–1665)

Article edits

Thanks so much for the article about John Giffard, it's interesting and you've done a great job of including images to the article. To focus attention on the subject of the article, John Giffard, I put extra information in notes.

Following review of the article there are a couple edits needed for the article:

• Provide the bibliographical information for Vivian source and Debrett's Peerage. There are guidelines against using genealogical sources, but I'm unaware of Debrett's Peerage and whether it's considered a reliable source or not.
• Provide sources for the citation needed tags.
• There's a long quote that would be great to break down into paraphrased prose. See: WP:Quotations#Overusing quotations.

If it's possible to find more recent sources, that would be great! Anything I can do to help, let me know.--CaroleHenson (talk) 02:00, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your positive comments.

1. I have provided full details of Vivian and Prince.
2. My references are to the 1895 & 1810 editions respectively, which I have therefore added in place of your given editions (Heralds Visits were not published by College of Arms but by Harleian Society!) - the page numbering & text may be different, I don't know, but have retained url's to the editions you provided.
3. Debrett's Peerage is a standard reference.
4. I have supplied citations needed, where not possible in one instance, I have removed the text - perhaps I am guilty of slight OR, the monument isn't alabaster as stated, so I've simply added a sic, I could remove that altogether if desired.
5. As for the long quote and your suggestion of a paraphrase, I can't paraphrase such prose as He was a gentleman of a very grave and comely aspect, of an obliging carriage, of a sober life, and a pious conversation. Such was his deportment towards men, in all his actions, as if he were conscious the eye of God was upon him; and such his behaviour towards God, in the instance of devotion and religion, as if he thought he was a spectacle to angels and to men. It would sound silly in modern idiom and would be literary vandalism, in my opinion. It is a contemporary monument I think worth quoting, after all this is all that has ever been recorded about this person, we are not spoilt for choice.
6. I have split the long para into sections, if that helps.
7. As for more recent sources, I am not aware of any.
8. Re: citation needed for "Grenville fell heroically at the battle, having commanded the Cornish pikemen, and was commemorated by Sir Bevil Grenville's Monument on Lansdowne Hill", the links to his WP biog & the monument are surely sufficient?
9. I'm sorry not to agree with your hiding of text re succession in notes, it is complex, but important for the reader to understand the extinction of this important Devon family. It surely cannot distract from the subject of the article as the sub-section is headed "children", so those not interested need not read it and won't get distracted. I've re-instated text to face of article.(Lobsterthermidor (talk) 14:02, 22 June 2013 (UTC))

Numbers to the above responses were inserted to make it easier to track responses.--CaroleHenson (talk) 18:28, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

1. Great!
2. It's much better to use later dates for sources, but I understand the issue about not knowing the page numbers in the more recent edition. I'll think about a way to get around that - for instance, books.google searches on the later editions could be done to find the page numbers.
3. Debrett's Peerage - I did some further checking, and although genealogy books or sources are generally disallowed, Debrett's Peerage is an allowed source.
4. Citation needed tags were removed. There are 2 ways to resolve them: 1) insert sources, or 2) remove the content if there are no WP:Reliable sources.
5. The point about long quotations isn't a personal opinion, it's a guideline. People have the information to the original source to read the full information. See WP:Quotations#Overusing quotations. I'll take a stab at rewording. You may want to read WP:What Wikipedia isn't. It may be that you want to create a webpage on the Internet, because there you wouldn't be subject to any guidelines, other than your own.
6. Great! Rather than using <br>s, I formatted with blockquotes
7. It's best to use recent sources, otherwise there may be a question about WP:Notability of the subject.
8. citation needed for "Grenville - I didn't see anything that mentioned sources for Grenville. It's really side comments anyway, since he has his own article. Blogs are not reliable sources, there's no editorial control to ensure that the information is accurate.
9. Regarding the children's information, the point wasn't to "hide" the text, but to keep the article specific to the subject of the article. If the family is important, then you may want to create additional articles that have wikilinks to the information about the family members. See an article I wrote about Sir Richard Herbert.

I'll go through and make some edits based on the above.--CaroleHenson (talk) 18:55, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Great work on tidying up this article, Carole. I don't know if you've seen them, but there are a number of very similar articles that would benefit from the same treatment if you're so inclined. What do you think about the application of WP:CAPTION ("captions ... should be succinct and informative") to this one?
P.S. regarding your point 8 above, I think Lt said "biog" not "blog" :)  —SMALLJIM  19:42, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! And it looks like I need to bring my screen view up another notch - thanks for clarifying the biog vs. blog. Regarding the captions, I so agree with you and read through the captions numerous times trying to figure out how to shorten them. I'll take another crack at it.--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:55, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Great copy edits, Small Jim!--CaroleHenson (talk) 23:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Details of sons included

Col. John Giffard was almost at the end of the long line of his family. It is important to explain how this important and historic Devonshire family died out shortly after and (briefly) how the estate of Brightley was lost. This was done in the Prince biography of Col. Giffard, at much greater length. It is not superfluous detail, and has been shown under sub-sections so as not to confuse. His sons are not worthy of their own WP articles but certainly in my opinion merit discussion in this article, which after all is designed to inform readers who are interested in this subject. An overly superficial treatment will thus disappoint such a reader. It helps the reader interested in this subject very little to merely state the names of who the sons married, without giving the wives' fathers' names, and links, enabling an appreciation of local family connections within the county gentry. Thus the fact that John married a Bampfylde is important to mention and explain by way of link. This was a very important and influential Devon family. If its not flagged up, the uninformed reader will lose out. Similarly it is necessary to explain who the Fane wife was, and her important family connections. (For example an alert reader will be enabled to make a connection between the Fane wife of Giffard and the Fane wife of the Earl of Bath (a fellow commissioner of array with Col. John) accross the river at Tawstock). I cannot agree with the excessive paring down of the article, and have restored the text regarding the sons.(Lobsterthermidor (talk) 22:47, 14 July 2014 (UTC))

Lobster, this consensus around this was discussed about twelve months ago in the section above - see User:CaroleHenson and User:Smalljim's comments, especially Carole's points that "if the family is important, then you may want to create additional articles that have wikilinks to the information about the family members." Please don't start reverting that consensus without discussing here first, and achieving a new consensus. I'd also urge you to read Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not again. The article in question is about John Giffard; it isn't about the history of the Giffard family line, or the estate, and so should focus on John, and cover the sort of information one might expect in a modern, 21st century, biographical encyclopaedic article. It's not a geneaological site.

As an example of the problem, a statements such as "In 1737 the daughters of Caesar Giffard sold the estate of Brightley to Samuel Rolle (1704–1747), of Hudscott, Chittlehampton, within the parish of Chittlehampton, the son and heir of Samuel Rolle (1669–1735), MP." is telling us about the activities of John Giffard's granddaughters, whom the granddaughters sold land to, and the parentage of the buyer of the land from said granddaughters, all sixty odd years after Giffard's death. The detail about the wider family line simply isn't relevant to the article - which is why Carole, Jim supported its removal from the main text a year back, and I've now removed it again. Hchc2009 (talk) 03:53, 15 July 2014 (UTC)

Ok, perhaps now you put it that way some of the text was a bit distant, fine. We'll leave it out. But - I do think it's important at least to state who Susanna Bampfylde and 2nd wife Frances Fane were. The latter, as I had suspected in my comment above, was actually the niece of the Countess of Bath at nearby Tawstock, as my source Andrews noted. This is clearly relevant (her husband the Earl of Bath was the "top man" in Devon of his era and connected with Col. John not only as a near neighbour but also as a Comm. of Array) and I will add (just a bit) to the para on son 1 accordingly, which I hope you will find acceptable. There is by the way quite a lot more on the main subject to add from Andrews, which I will be doing soon, just to let you know.(Lobsterthermidor (talk) 18:59, 15 July 2014 (UTC))