the late viscount cut it up to cover screens or footstools; nor, strange to say, could she ever be made to understand that she had done wrong.

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The first of the Irish Beresfords figures, about 1611, in the capacity of manager of the corporation of Londoners, known by the name of The Society of the New Plantation in Ulster.' Their best blood is derived from the marriage of Sir Marcus Beresford, in 1717, with the heiress of the Le Poers, Earls of Tyrone. The Irish possessions of the Courtenays were accumulated by Sir William Courtenay, one of the undertakers' of 1585, whom the family records piously denominate the Great.'1 Sir Valentine Browne, the ancestor of the Earls of Kenmare, was an undertaker' at the same epoch, and made an equally good thing of it: although his grandson petitioned the Crown for a reduction of the reserved rent of 113l. 68. 8d., on the ground that the lands lay in the most barren and remote parts of Kerry,' namely, in and about the Killarney district, the whole of which belongs to Lord Kenmare and Mr. Herbert of Mucross.

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The exorbitant pretensions of the Welsh to ancient birth are ill sustained by proofs; and the lack of written records, or even of plausible traditions, has frequently compelled their genealogists to resort to mere fable when they try to carry a pedigree back beyond the sixteenth century. That of the Mostyns

1 If Fielding had been well read in genealogical history, the frequent occurrence of this term might have given a hint for an additional touch or two to the character of Jonathan Wild the Great.

of Mostyn, preserved amongst their archives for more than three hundred years, is inscribed on illuminated parchment, and measures more than seventy feet long by about a foot broad. It begins with Noah, and after passing through most of the princely houses mentioned in the Old Testament, is made to flow through sundry royal and imperial channels, till it reaches Edward III., where it stops; so that it would fit any family claiming descent from the Plantagenets. Equally superfluous was it for Sir Bernard Burke to track the Tudors through the dark, unwritten periods of Welsh history, by way of prefatory ornament to the genealogy of a distinguished man of letters, whose position, acquired and hereditary, needed no adventitious aid. If Lord Lytton's ancestor married a genuine Tudor, we can dispense with her descent from Welsh princes with unpronounceable names in the sixth century.'

'Ancient lineage!' said Mr. Millbank; ‘I never heard of a peer with an ancient lineage. The real old families of this country are to be found among the peasantry: the gentry, too, may lay some claim to old blood. I can point you out Saxon families in this county who can trace their pedigrees beyond the Conquest; I know of some Norman gentlemen whose fathers undoubtedly came over with the Conqueror. But a peer with an ancient lineage is to me quite a novelty. No, no; the thirty years of the wars of the Roses freed us from those gentlemen. I take it, after the battle of Tewkes

1 See Burke's 'Peerage and Baronetage,'―title, Lytton. Strange to say, Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, who had thrown over three or four hundred years of early Roman history without compunction, grew positively angry on my telling him that the pedigree of the Lewises of Harpton Court could not be carried higher than the sixteenth century.

bury, a Norman baron was almost as rare a being in England as a wolf is now.'

'I have always understood,' said Coningsby, 'that our peerage was the finest in Europe.'

'From themselves,' said Millbank, 'and the heralds they pay to paint their carriages. But I go to facts. When Henry VII. called his first Parliament, there were only twenty-nine temporal peers to be found, and even some of them took their seats illegally, for they had been attainted. Of these twenty-nine not five remain; and they, as the Howards, for instance, are not Norman nobility. We owe the English peerage to three sources: the spoliation of the Church; the open and flagrant sale of its honours by the elder Stuarts; and the borough-mongering of our own times. These are the three main sources of the existing peerage of England, and in my opinion disgraceful ones.'

Bentham and his disciples were also wont to take for granted that the nobility and gentry of the United Kingdom are a mushroom race as compared with the Continental nobility, and to complain that, if the people were to be over-ridden or kept down by blood, they might reasonably insist upon the best. If this be their main grievance, they may take comfort, for the British empire is rather above than below the average of European communities in this respect; and the alleged superiority of the Continental aristocracies vanishes or diminishes apace when we apply to them the same critical tests to which we habitually subject our own. It is a matter of indifference to us whether we adopt or throw aside tradition. In either case we are a match for them. But the contest must be carried on with equal arms; and we shall not feel called

on to admit that the Talleyrands descend from the Comtes de Périgord, or the Chateaubriands from the sovereign princes of Auvergne, unless it be simultaneously conceded that the Nevilles descend from Weltheof, Earl of Northumberland, in 969, and the Drummonds from Attila. A Chalmers or a Nicholas would make wild work with the pièces justificatives of a French, German, or Spanish genealogist; and Gibbon excepts no nation when he says :

'The proudest families are content to lose, in the darkness of the middle ages, the tree of their pedigree, which, however deep and lofty, must ultimately rise from a plebeian root; and their historians must descend ten centuries below the Christian era before they can ascertain any lineal succession by the evidence of surnames, of arms, and of authentic records.'

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This passage occurs in his Digression on the Family of Courtenay,' appended to Chapter LI. of his History; and of this family, which has filled an imperial throne and intermarried with royal houses, the primitive record (he states) is a passage of the continuation of Armoin, a monk of Fleury, who wrote in the twelfth century.' As to the English branch, it is certain at least that Henry II. distinguished in his camps and councils a Reginald of the name and arms, and it may be fairly presumed of the genuine race, of the Courtenays of France.'

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The ducal family of Levis, in France, boasted that they were descended from the princes of Judah, and were wont to produce a very old painting representing one of their ancestors bowing, hat in hand, to the

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Virgin, who says, Couvrez-vous, mon cousin.' The house of Croy possessed a pendant to it, depicting Noah with one foot in the Ark, exclaiming: 'Sauvez les papiers de la maison de Croy.' The head of another French house is reported to have said in answer to a threatening remonstrance from his spiritual adviser, Le bon Dieu n'aura jamais le cœur de damner un Clermont-Tonnerre.'

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The pretensions of the Montmorencys are well known. But there being no proof of the existence of a Seigneur de Montmorency before the middle of the tenth century, the descent of this family from the first Christian baron is untenable, if intelligible: whether they contend that their ancestor was the first Christian who was made a baron, or the first baron who became a Christian. The most plausible interpretation is, that he was the first known baron or seigneur de la Chrétienté-that is, of a district so called. The analogous title of Dean of Christianity was not uncommon in the Church. The title of first Baron of France is explained to mean of the Isle of France, where the township from which the Montmorencys derive their name is situate.1

Sir Bernard Burke states that the direct male line of the Montmorencys ended in Henri, Duc de Montmorency, Marshal of France, who was beheaded at Toulouse in 1632.2 Who then are the Montmorencys

1 'L'Art de Vérifier les Dates,' &c. vol. ii. p. 643.

Lon

2 The Rise of Great Families, Other Essays and Stories.' don, 1873. A book, like all by the same author, full of curious and interesting matter.