ignorant, by pretending that none can be authentic, which are not recognized by their office.

I should call a coat, which has been invented since the extinction of the feudal system, not the less counterfeit because it possesses the fiat of a regular Herald. It can only be intended by imitative insignia, which to a common eye appear like the genuine, to confound modern families, with those which are really ancient. If this end be not effected, surely it cannot be pretended that any end at all is answered. Does it therefore arise from the arch ingenuity, or rather from the laudable simplicity, of the present very able and erudite President of the College, that the coats of his rich and charming invention, bear, in point of the nature, or number and complication, of the charges he inserts in them, no more likeness to a shield inscribed with ancient blazonry, than to an Indian scrawl, or Otaheitan breast-plate? He is not content, like his predecessors, with such meagre allusions as Rooks for the name of Rooke, Salmons for the name of Salmon, and Oxen for the name of Oxenden. Had he been to deck out a coat for the latter, we should have had a perspective landscape of the Dens in which the noble animals were reposing, with the straw, the dung, the manger, and the oil-cakes on which they were growing fat; and lest this should not be sufficient, there would be added a green chief, adorned with a ship in full sail, all on dry land, surmounted by a fox's brush for the banner, and decorated by a dog-kennel on the deck! And when all this was done, there would still be added a copiousness of verbal blazon, which would out-rival the unintelligibility of Christie himself!

About the reign of Hen. VIII. the Heralds were

fond

fond of filling the shields of new grantees with many and complex bearings; witness the arms of Paget, Cromwell, Petre, &c. some of which have since been simplified: but still the composites were strictly consistent with the ancient usages of the art. Something, no doubt, may be conceded in favour of these more skilful counterfeits, which have received the sanction of Time, and ornamented the seals and the furniture of many honourable persons, who have slept for generations in the tomb. But the distinction between the true and the false, will always be made by a curious and severe investigator.

To aid these inquiries, there are some among the following books, which will be found to possess no trifling interest. The works of Wyrley, Camden, Spelman, Byshe, Dugdale, Nisbet, Edmondson, and Dallaway, in particular, which treat the subject historically, will afford much valuable information. But a well-digested, and not tedious treatise, which would exhibit a series of the most ancient coats from authentic deeds and monuments, and trace the few remaining families whose shields had their undoubted origin with the Crusades, is still a desideratum which yet, I think, it might not be very difficult to execute. I have a deed in my possession all fairly written on a little slip of parchment, containing a grant of land in the time of Hen. II. by the male ancestor of an honourable Baronet now living, who a little forgot his venerable descent when he condescended to head mobs, and look to the support of a desperate rabble, only fitted for the banner of a Jack Cade; and to this deed is annexed the distinct and handsome seal of his arms, as they have ever since been borne by his progenitors.

There are several other families, whose antiquity can be ascertained with equal certainty. But many of these neither are, nor ever have been, in the highest ranks of society; and since the order of knighthood has fallen into disgrace, have not been graced even with the humblest titles.

Singular as it may appear to those who are only superficially acquainted with these investigations, the records of the Heralds will afford very imperfect aid on this subject. Some of these families have scarcely been recognized, while many of their branches, relying on their known reputation for venerable descent, have laughed at the summonses of Visitors, and saved the fees, which more doubtful gentry were glad to pay for their passport to be admitted amongst respectable ranks.*

There

A striking and unanswerable instance of this happened in a branch of the Chandos family, which, as all the particulars have come within the Editor's positive knowledge, he ventures to mention.

A near branch of that family were settled in a village in Gloucestershire, in the time of Char. II. at the very time that a very particular and remarkably able Visitation of that County was made by the celebrated Gregory King. But that Visitation, being referred to, furnished not the slightest notice of these persons. Had the evidence of their existence or of their relationship been weak, this would have been urged as strong negative proof, not only of their actual descent, but even of their gentility. But luckily two tombstones and a will put that fact out of the reach of cavil. A Herald however, more known for his perseverance than his sagacity, impressed with a strong prejudice of the omniscience of his fraternity, yet incapable of contradicting the direct assertions of an epitaph, found himself in a dilemma which called forth all his industry; and he set himself to work, till, lo! he actually grubbed out from the dusty refuse of the College, the original summons to the person who was then the head of this branch, and resided at the family house, to attend the progress of the Visiting Herald at the neigh

bouring

There are indeed many things, which have always required a material reform in the customs of this office;

bouring town on that occasion. The fact of his residence, at this very crisis, on the spot, could then no longer be denied; even though no note of such summons is entered in the Visitation Book; nor the slightest hint that such a branch was in being. The Gentleman therefore must have slighted this call upon him ; and the fallacy of trusting to such a sort of negative testimony must be established in every candid mind acquainted with these facts.

Another branch of this family, of great opulence and figure, were seated for two centuries in Somersetshire, during more than one Visitation; yet are never noticed in them.

Yet against a third branch, which had lately emigrated to another county, strong arguments were, in the face of these facts, judicially urged in a solema Court of Law, because they were not registered in the Visitation of that new county, soon after their emigration.

Nor is this all. The Visitations, which did notice this family, exhibited in the family itself omissions still more extraordinary. The Baronet, for whom the pedigree was drawn, and who gave it the confirmation of his own signature, actually suffered it to stand with the omission of his own two brothers; both whom he proves to have been then surviving, by giving them legacies in his will of an immediately subsequent date. And even here, incredible as it may seem, arguments of non-existence were founded on other omissions of this nugatory document, which disproved itself.

But I must stop-volumes would scarcely contain all of this nature that this unhappy subject affords. When once the mind is set afloat from the great principles and strict rules of evidence, the (protectors of every thing that is dear to us in civil society, our lives, our properties, our birthrights, our reputations,) what end is there to individual caprice? to the wanderings of the brain,

-inendless mazes lost?

Yet a few more words; for which as the fact is curious, I may stand excused. On the occasion alluded to, the person who had to make out his case, was called on to dispose of the elder brother of the Gloucestershire Gentleman, whose summons I have related, but of whom nothing was known except his baptism. The junior brother was in possession of the

office; and which would equally redound to the benefit of themselves, though their fear of the contrary has hitherto confirmed their adherence to them. From the time that Hen. VII. broke in upon the strictness of Entails, and the Commons gained an ascendancy in the State, a great number of private families, partly from the harvest of Abbey-lands, which soon followed, and partly from Commerce and Agriculture, * rose into immediate wealth, and became the founders of houses, which have ever since held a rank perhaps next to the Peerage. Some of these, probably, assumed arms to which they had no right; others were incapable, either from the lapse of time, or mere negligence, of producing technical evidence of their title to the coats, which had descended to them from their ancestors, and in truth belonged to them. Such

family estate, and it was a little hard to be called on to trace, at the distance of 150 years, every infant to his grave,

That being born did lie

In his sad nurse's arms an hour or two, and die.

Here therefore ingenuity hoped to have placed an insurmountable stumbling block. But by the merest accident a copy of a letter was found in this house by the lady, a stranger in blood, who possessed the estate, stating that the untraced brother died at the age of seventeen at Constantinople, where ⚫ he had attended an embassy!!!

Such were a few of the strange difficulties which the representative of one of the few families of ancient nobility had to struggle with, in endeavouring to establish hisbirthright. It is surely not too much to say, that in the eyes of many, who knew the case most intimately, and whose profound knowledge of the laws of evidence none can doubt, he overcame them 'all! But all was vain!

At that time several families, which have since led the county of Kent, rose from the rich grazing lands of Romney Marsh. I forbear to particularize, for fear of offence.

people