FAMILY VICISSITUDES.*

We all know in a general sense that families rise and decline, and that by degrees a considerable substitution takes place in the upper ranks, or "crust," of society. We know that family trees, like other trees, must eventually perish, the question being only one of time. But through the labours of a genealogist, such as Sir Bernard Burke's in the book before us, and through such alone, can we form an idea of the rapid rate of their extinction. We need not revert to Domesday Book to see the harvest which Time has reaped, or the names thence obliterated. If we refer only to the Herald's visitations, we shall find, perhaps to our surprise, that few, very few, of the historic names, which held contemporary sway in a particular district, still exist in male descendants. In Herefordshire, a county peculiarly rich in ancient families, it is said that there are but two or three county gentlemen who can show a male descent from the proprietors thus recorded. Mr. E. P. Shirley, M.P.,

* "Vicissitudes of Families, and other Essays," by Sir BERNARD BURKE, Ulster King of Arms. Longman, 1859. [From the Times of Sept. 28, 1859.]

has lately published a work on England at large, in which he reckons a very small number of such notables anywhere. The prime cause, no doubt, is the natural exhaustion of race, the wearing out of the family sap, to which actuaries could assign a term, if they had data sufficient for their averages and calculations. But there are other causes at work, of a disturbing tendency, especially in an aspiring and progressive community, which anticipate the agency of time in the work of family destruction.

Sir Bernard Burke rather gives us instances of the more remarkable results of these than a view of their operation, or an estimate of their comparative force; and if gentlemen of his profession omit to generalize, it is impossible that others should do so who have not the same materials for generalization. One important cause of family ruin he remarks, and this is one which others, before him, have dwelt upon. In the vicinity of commercial successes an old proprietary has a tendency to disappear, for a very curious reason. Commerce provides luxury, commerce induces expense, commerce prepares the ruin which commerce itself repairs. Thus the influence of a metropolitan centre like London is felt in the more rapid extinction of the families in its neighbourhood than in those at a distance. "Such who live southward," says old Fuller, near London (which, for the lustre thereof, I may fitly call the sun of our nation), in the warmth of wealth, and plenty of pleasures, quickly strip and disrobe themselves of their estates and inheritance; whilst the gentry living in this north country, on the

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confines of Scotland, in the wind of war (he is referring to the fable of the wind and the sun), "daily alarmed with their blustering enemies, buckle their estates, as their armour, the closer unto them; and, since, have no less thriftly defended their patrimony in peace than formerly valiantly maintained it in war." Indeed, it has often been remarked that the more distant a county is from London, the more lasting are its old families. Few old resident families are to be found in Middlesex, Surrey, or Essex; while, in Northumberland, Cheshire, Shropshire, Devon, and Cornwall-all remote from London-many a stem planted in the days of the Plantagenets is still flourishing. In the great hive of our northern industry, on the other hand, old families have, comparatively speaking, maintained their ground, probably because commerce there has afforded them fewer facilities for their natural beneficent tendency to waste their inheritance. Sir Bernard marvels that in Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, such families as Towneley, Gerard, Blackburne, Blundell, Trafford, Fairfax, Foljambe, and Wentworth "have stood against the waves and weathers of time." He is not so surprised that so many have perished as that so many remain. And, in fact, Sir Bernard is by no means clear as to the causes of family displacement, but awaits with ourselves the appearance of some genealogical De Quetelet, • who shall give us the laws, averages, and proportions of family durations and disappearances.

On the other hand, it must be allowed that Sir Bernard has produced from his repertory a variety of

examples which are most entertaining as a series of independent facts. He narrates the vicissitudes of the Royal Stuarts and the House of Albany, the fortunes of the O'Neills and the Geraldines, and of many other historic lines who are memorable for their greatness or misfortunes. For the story of the lastnamed family he has the assistance of the recent work of the Earl of Kildare, which, with Lord Lindsay's "Lives of the Lindsays," is prominent among the few recent examples of family archives, or, as they may be truly designated, monumental literature. Sir Bernard also sketches the fortunes of the Percys and Nevilles, and these, at the very commencement of his volume, very naturally arrest the reader by some extraordinary particulars.

Time was when the Percys and Nevilles held almost regal sway in Northumberland and Durham. "The two great princes of the north were, Northumberland at Alnwick, and Westmoreland at Raby Castle." But the list of Percys who fell fighting the battles of the Red Rose, exemplifies one form of the weakness which extinguished so many of our English great families, especially during the 15th century. Another string of Percys went to the scaffold, or its equivalents, for too ferocious an adherence to the unreformed religion; and when Joscelyn, eleventh Earl of Northumberland, departed this life, happily closing the male line of these inconvenient Hotspurs, in the middle of the 17th century, the broad lands and nobility of the illustrious deceased were claimed by James Percy, a Dublin trunk-maker. Whether

any sapling of the Percy stem had produced this serviceable member of society is admitted to be doubtful, but, from his persevering against the might and wealth of the most powerful Duke of Somerset, an inference of descent has been fairly made from his combativeness. The trunk-maker contended against the Duke of Somerset for fifteen years, and obtained during the contest some temporary triumphs, although Sir Bernard believes that he had no right whatsoever to the titles sought; but he was badly dealt by, and, pending the litigation, excited no little sympathy, which we are weak enough ourselves to share, even in this day. His defeat and total annihilation failed to set his pretensions finally at rest, "for it is even still believed by many that the trunk-maker was the true Percy." Certain it is that the poor claimant was remorselessly treated as criminal, for presuming to trouble the House of Lords, and daring to enter the lists with the Duke of Somerset. The punishment for claiming blood-relationship with the Percys, after the Lords' Committee had decided in a contrary sense, was, to paste the trunk-maker like one of his own trunks, with a descriptive placard bearing the words, "The false and impudent pretender to the earldom of Northumberland ;" and this placard the trunk-maker was required to wear in Westminster Hall. Nevertheless, such was the aspiring quality of his blood, that it is said that his son, Sir Antony Percy, filled the office of Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1699, and did honour to the Percy who begot him per se or per alium,