It appears, then, that Theodore, who married and died in Cornwall, was the fourth in direct descent from Thomas, younger brother of the Emperor Constantine, and who fled ’with some naked adherents to Italy,’ where his children were educated.[2] The truth of the story related in the inscription was corroborated by a circumstance which happened upwards of twenty years ago.  The vault in which Palaeologus was interred having been accidently opened, curiosity prompted the lifting of the lid.  The coffin, which was made of oak, was in an entire state, and the body sufficiently perfect to shew that the dead man exceeded the common stature.  The head was a long oval, and the nose believed to have been aquiline; a long white beard reached down the breast—­another symbol of his Greek extraction.

Of his family little is known:  Theodore, the eldest son, was a sailor, and died on board the Charles II., as is proved by his will, dated 1693.  He appears to have possessed landed property, and to have left a widow named Martha, but no issue.  The younger daughter, Dorothy, was married at Landulph to William Arundell in 1636, and died in 1681.[3] Maria died unmarried, and was buried in the same church in 1674.  Of John and Ferdinando, the other sons, no memorial seems to have been preserved in this country; and it was believed as highly probable that the church of Landulph contained the remains of the last survivors of the Grecian dynasty, once the illustrious sovereigns of Byzantium.

Time, however, the great revealer of secrets, brought to light facts which proved that one of the sons of Theodore of Pesaro in Italy had removed to the West Indies, where he lived for some years, and died in 1678.  It is mentioned by the historian Oldmixon[4] as a tradition, that a descendant of the former imperial Greek family of Constantinople resided in Barbadoes; but he doubts the fact, without giving any reason for his scepticism.  The tradition, however, proves to have been quite current, and the circumstance that led to its confirmation, and to the discovery of the body of Ferdinando Palaeologus, and other relics testifying to his connection with the Greek emperors, are narrated by Sir Robert Schomburgk in his recent history of Barbadoes.  During the terrible hurricane of 1831, which nearly destroyed the island, among the other public buildings that yielded to the violence of the storm, was the parish church of St John, which stood in a romantic situation near the ‘Cliff,’ at an elevation of 824 feet.  When the ruins were removed, and in clearing out the rubbish, ’the coffin of Ferdinando Palaeologus (we quote Sir Robert’s account) was discovered under the organ-loft, in the vault of Sir Peter Callotin.  The circumstance that the coffin stood in a direction opposite to the others deposited in the vault, drew attention to it; the head was lying to the west, the feet pointing to the east, according to the Greek custom.  These accounts raised the curiosity of the rector of the