history, which luckily is not very long.

When pigtails still grew on the backs of the British gentry, and their
wives wore cushions on their heads, over which they tied their own hair,
and disguised it with powder and pomatum: when Ministers went in their
stars and orders to the House of Commons, and the orators of the
Opposition attacked nightly the noble lord in the blue ribbon: when Mr.
Washington was heading the American rebels with a courage, it must be
confessed, worthy of a better cause: there came up to London, out of a
northern county, Mr. Thomas Newcome, afterwards Thomas Newcome, Esq., and
sheriff of London, afterwards Mr. Alderman Newcome, the founder of the
family whose name has given the title to this history. It was but in the
reign of George III. that Mr. Newcome first made his appearance in
Cheapside; having made his entry into London on a waggon, which landed
him and some bales of cloth, all his fortune, in Bishopsgate Street;
though if it could be proved that the Normans wore pigtails under William
the Conqueror, and Mr. Washington fought against the English under King
Richard in Palestine, I am sure some of the present Newcomes would pay
the Heralds' Office handsomely, living, as they do, amongst the noblest
of the land, and giving entertainments to none but the very highest
nobility and elite of the fashionable and diplomatic world, as you may
read any day in the newspapers. For though these Newcomes have got a
pedigree from the College, which is printed in Budge's Landed Aristocracy
of Great Britain, and which proves that the Newcome of Cromwell's army,
the Newcome who was among the last six who were hanged by Queen Mary for
Protestantism, were ancestors of this house; of which a member
distinguished himself at Bosworth Field; and the founder, slain by King
Harold's side at Hastings, had been surgeon-barber to King Edward the
Confessor; yet, between ourselves, I think that Sir Brian Newcome, of
Newcome, does not believe a word of the story, any more than the rest of