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This tree reminds me of the nineteenth century hostess who was giving a dinner where one of the guests was the Aga Khan.  She wrote to the College of Heralds to ask where he should be seated and they replied "The Aga Khan is considered by his followers to be a direct descendent of Almighty God - an Engrlish duke takes precedence".

I've not seen the pattern followed in any English lines, but it was quites common on the Scottish side of my wife's family - always allowing for the possibility that the family might very occasionally take a dislike to the next name on the list (or the next relative)
On a holiday on Lesbos in the 90's we got to know the owners of the place we were staying and found they were following the same pattern as a matter of course.

For me the moment was when the 1911 census was released.  The publicity included details about what Daivid Beckham's great grandfather had been doing in 1911 and I realised that my great grandfather had been dead for nearly 70 years by then.

The Saffron Walden cat would have had to be running at Olympic speed to get itself flattened into the plaster five feet off the ground - backwards.  Also the building dated from before the witch frenzy of the seventeenth century, and anyway a dead cat would be a evidence for the defence - they were usually regarded as the Devil's animals, so it was OK to kill them.  I think sticking one in a wall of a building was just an occasional tradition to ensure good luck, not related to witches; the people who did it probably had no more coherent motive than the people who pour champagne over a new ship - or a Formula One driver.