chapter 5 (volume 2)._

Sir Andrew Halliday, in his "Annals of the House of Hanover," traces the genealogy of the Guelfs with great minuteness and precision—with more minuteness, perhaps, in some remote particulars, and more precision, than seems consistent with entire credibility. He carries the line back to Edico, king or prince of the Heruli, or Rugii, or Scyrii,—the stock from which came Odoacer, who overturned the Western Roman Empire and made himself the first king of Italy. Edico, who was subject to Attila, and the favorite adviser of the king of the Huns, is thought to have had a son or brother named Guelf or Welf, who fell in battle with the Ostrogoths. It is to him that Sir Andrew is disposed to assign the honor of being the historical chief of the great family of the Guelfs. If not from this shadowy Guelf, it is from another of like name in the next generation—a brother of Odoacer—that he sees the family spring, and the story of its wide-branching and many-rooted growth, in Friuli, Altdorf, Bavaria, old Saxony, Brunswick, Hanover,—and thence, more royally than ever, in England,—is as interesting as a narrative of highly complicated genealogy can be.

_Sir A. Halliday, Annals of the House of Hanover._

From the Guelf uncertainly indicated above were descended two Marquesses of Este, "successively known in German and Italian story as the first and second of that name. … Azo, the second Marquess of Este in Italy (born A. D. 995, died 1097), the head of the Italian (junior) branch of Guelphs [see ESTE], married Cunigunda, the sole heiress of the German Guelphs of Altdorf, thus uniting in his family the blood, wealth, and power of both branches of the old Guelphs, and becoming the common father of the later German and Italian princes of the name of Guelph. {1615} No wonder, then, that he was elected by the Emperor, Henry III., as his representative in Italy. … Cunigunda, the first wife of Azo II., bore him one son, Guelph, who was known in German history as Guelph VI. He succeeded to his mother's titles and vast estates on her death, A. D. 1055, and to those of his father, A. D. 1097. … Henry IV. invested him with the Duchy of Bavaria, A. D. 1071—a title first assumed 170 years before (A. D. 900) by his almost mythological ancestor, Henry of the Golden Chariot." This Guelph VI. was the grandfather of Henry the Proud, Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, referred to above.

_P. M. Thornton, The Brunswick Accession,