of fame in the days of Alfred the Great, where perhaps they had stood
for ages before: they continued the elevation about seven hundred years
after; but having treasonable charges brought against them, in the days
of Queen Elizabeth, about two hundred years ago, they were thrown from
this exalted eminence, and dashed to pieces in the fall. In various
consultations with a member of this honourable house, I found the
greatness of his family not only lost, but the memory of it also. I
assured him, that his family stood higher in the scale of honour, than
any private one within my knowledge: that his paternal ancestors, for
about seven generations, were successively Earls of Warwick, before the
Norman conquest: that, though he could not boast a descent from the
famous Guy, he was related to him: that, though Turchell, Earl of
Warwick at the conquest, his direct ancestor, lost the Earldom in favour
of Roger Newburgh, a favourite of William's; yet, as the Earl did not
appear in arms, against the Conqueror, at the battle of Hastings, nor
oppose the new interest, he was allowed to keep forty-six of his manors:
that he retired upon his own vast estate, which he held in dependence,
where the family resided with great opulence, in one house, for many
centuries, 'till their reduction above-mentioned. He received the
information with some degree of amazement, and replied with a serious
face,--"Perhaps there may have been something great in my predecessors,
for my grandfather kept several cows in Birmingham and sold milk."

The families of those ancient heroes, of Saxon and Norman race, are,
chiefly by the mutations of time, and of state, either become extinct,
or as above, reduced to the lowest verge of fortune. Those few
therefore, whose descent is traceable, may be carried higher than that
of the present nobility; for I know none of these last, who claim
peerage beyond Edward the first, about 1295. Hence it follows, that for
antiquity, alliance, and blood, the advantage is evidently in favour of