When Lord Avonmore got his peerage for voting for the Union, he had his
patent of nobility read out at a dinner-party, and it commenced,
'George, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.'

'Stop,' cried Jerry, 'I object to that. The consideration is set out too
early in the deed.'

This long digression over, I revert to my father about whose respectable
practice at the Four Courts I know nothing except that he allowed others
to become judges, and did not find solicitors putting his services up to
auction.

By the death of his elder brother, he succeeded to a property, near
Dingle, on which he went to live and then got married, which was the
wisest thing that he could do.

My mother was Mary Hickson, and her descent was this wise.

The Murrays were said to have come to Scotland from Moravia in the first
century; and a pretty bulky history of the clan reveals as much truth
about them as the author cared to put in when tired of inventing less
probable facts. Sir Walter Murray, Lord of Drumshegrat, came to Ireland
with Edward de Bruce and was killed in battle, leaving three sons, one
of whom, christened Andrew, settled in County Down. Some of his
descendants migrated to Bantry, where, in 1670, William Murray married
Ann Hornswell, and was succeeded by his third son George, who was in
turn succeeded by his eldest son William, who married Anne Grainger. Of
the marriage, there was only one daughter Judith, who married Robert
Hickson, heir to the property.