great House of Vipont! and as nobles of elder date had become scarce and
poor, Henry VII. was pleased to make the House of Vipont an Earl,--the
Earl of Montfort. In the reign of Henry VIII., instead of burning
Lollards, the House of Vipont was all for the Reformation: it obtained
the lands of two priories and one abbey. Gorged with that spoil, the
House of Vipont, like an anaconda in the process of digestion, slept
long. But no, it slept not. Though it kept itself still as a mouse
during the reign of Bloody Queen Mary (only letting it be known at Court
that the House of Vipont had strong papal leanings); though during the
reigns of Elizabeth and James it made no noise, the House of Vipont was
silently inflating its lungs and improving its constitution. Slept,
indeed! it was wide awake. Then it was that it began systematically its
grand policy of alliances; then was it sedulously grafting its olive
branches on the stems of those fruitful New Houses that had sprung up
with the Tudors; then, alive to the spirit of the day, provident of the
wants of the morrow, over the length and breadth of the land it wove the
interlacing network of useful cousinhood! Then, too, it began to build
palaces, to enclose parks; it travelled, too, a little, did the House of
Vipont! it visited Italy; it conceived a taste: a very elegant House
became the House of Vipont! And in James's reign, for the first time,
the House of Vipont got the Garter. The Civil Wars broke out: England
was rent asunder. Peer and knight took part with one side or the other.
The House of Vipont was again perplexed. Certainly at the commencement
it, was all for King Charles. But when King Charles took to fighting,
the House of Vipont shook its sagacious head, and went about, like Lord
Falkland, sighing, "Peace, peace!" Finally, it remembered its neglected
estates in Ireland: its duties called it thither. To Ireland it went,
discreetly sad, and, marrying a kinswoman of Lord Fauconberg,--the
connection least exposed to Fortune's caprice of all the alliances formed
by the Lord Protector's family,--it was safe when Cromwell visited