Ireland; and no less safe when Charles II. was restored to England.
During the reign of the merry monarch the House of Vipont was a courtier,
married a beauty, got the Garter again, and, for the first time, became
the fashion. Fashion began to be a power. In the reign of James II.
the House of Vipont again contrived to be a minor, who came of age just
in time to take the oaths of fealty to William and Mary. In case of
accidents, the House of Vipont kept on friendly terms with the exiled
Stuarts, but it wrote no letters, and got into no scrapes. It was not,
however, till the Government, under Sir Robert Walpole, established the
constitutional and parliamentary system which characterizes modern
freedom, that the puissance accumulated through successive centuries by
the House of Vipont became pre-eminently visible. By that time its lands
were vast; its wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as "a Great
House," was a part of the British Constitution. At this period, the
House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand
divisions,--the peer's branch and the commoner's. The House of Commons
had become so important that it was necessary for the House of Vipont to
be represented there by a great commoner. Thus arose the family of Carr
Vipont. That division, owing to a marriage settlement favouring a
younger son by the heiress of the Carrs, carried off a good slice from
the estate of the earldom: /uno averso, non deficit alter/; the earldom
mourned, but replaced the loss by two wealthy wedlocks of its own; and
had long since seen cause to rejoice that its power in the Upper Chamber
was strengthened by such aid in the Lower. For, thanks to its
parliamentary influence, and the aid of the great commoner, in the reign
of George III. the House of Vipont became a Marquess. From that time to
the present day, the House of Vipont has gone on prospering and
progressive. It was to the aristocracy what the "Times" newspaper is to
the press. The same quick sympathy with public feeling, the same unity
of tone and purpose, the same adaptability, and something of the same