_Some Men are more fond of telling long Stories than others are of
listening to them._
When this inauspicious conference was over, and the subject matter left,
in the diplomatic phrase, _ad referendum_, Robert de Lancaster, who was
anxious to dispatch the more interesting business of the day, rang the
bell for his servant, and by him was informed that all parties were in
readiness to attend him to the audit-room, where, amongst other family
treasures, the record of his pedigree was kept in a vaulted casemate so
fortified, as to bid defiance both to force and fire.
Accompanied by Cecilia, Philip, Wilson and Lawyer Davis, followed by the
nurse carrying the infant, and Williams, in his bardal habit, led by a
venerable domestic out of livery, he proceeded to the spot, and with his
own hands liberated the incarcerated roll. It was a splendid record, and
when spread out at full length exhibited several figures gaudily
emblazoned. Colonel Wilson, who had no great respect at heart, but much
gravity of countenance, whilst these ceremonials were in operation,
addressing himself to the master of the show, said--It is well, my good
friend, that you have stage room enough to display this fine
spectacle in perfection without putting any of your ancestors to
inconvenience--Then passing along till he came to the upper end of the
roll, where Japheth, son of Noah, conspicuously kept his post, and
pointing to a figure on the step next below him, he gravely asked who
that majestic personage might be in kingly robes, wearing a crown on
his head, and carrying a sceptre in his hand: Robert De Lancaster as
gravely replied, that it was Samothes, the first sovereign monarch of
this island, from him called Samothea.--Wilson bowed, and obtruded no
more questions.
Whilst the ceremony of enrolment was in process--I record this infant,
said the grandfather, by the name of John, although he hath not yet
received the sacred rite of baptism, forasmuch as the _pronomina_ of
John, Robert and Philip have been successively adopted by my family from
the very earliest time of the Christian æra to the present--Write him
down therefore by the name of John.
This being done in proper form by Lawyer Davis, and date annexed, blind
Williams gave a crowning twang upon his harp (for I omitted to premise
that he brought it with him) and in a loud and solemn tone chanted
forth--FLOREAT!--when our hero (unwillingly I record it to his shame)
set up such a dismal and most dolorous howl, as startled all the
hearers, but most of all his grandfather, who, struck with horror, cried
out to the nurse--Take him away, take him instantly away! Why would you
let him roar at this unlucky moment?--Bless your honour, said the
prating gossip, ’tis a sign of strength--A sign! repeated the sage; how
should you know of what it is a sign? Away with him at once! I would it
had not happened.
As the cavalcade now marched away in solemn silence, Colonel Wilson,
halting on his wooden leg, whispered to Lawyer Davis, who was in the
rear--This is ridiculous enough, friend Davis, we must fairly confess;
but the harmless foibles of good and worthy men should not expose them
to our contempt.
Amongst the many oddities (for I am loth to call them absurdities) that
marked the character of Robert de Lancaster, his pride of pedigree was
one of the most prominent and most open to ridicule. That his friend
Colonel Wilson saw it in this light there is no doubt; yet although he
was quite intolerant enough towards many of Robert’s eccentricities upon
speculative points, in this favourite folly he left him undisturbed,
perceiving, as we may suppose, that it was a prejudice not to be
attacked but at the risque of his friendship. This topic therefore had
never come into discussion, and even the history of the picture, lately
brought out of obscurity, was, as we have before observed, new to the
incurious colonel. He had seen the pedigree unrolled for the first
time, but of its contents he knew no more than what his single question
about King Samothes had drawn from De Lancaster in the way of
explanation.
If Wilson acquiesced in this foible of his friend, none else amongst the
numbers, that were in habits of acquaintance with the family, were
likely to start any question as to the antiquity of it; they were so
cordially welcomed, and so hospitably entertained at Kray Castle, that
it would have been hard indeed upon their host, if they could have
swallowed nothing at his table but the dinner, that he put upon it. Add
to this, that the good old man was a patient listener to other people’s
anecdotes, though a deliberate narrator of his own. For all those
dealers in the marvellous, who are proverbially said to shoot a long
bow, he had a great deal of companionable fellow-feeling, and as he did
not hold the commonly received opinions of the world in very high
respect, he had boldly put together and amassed a curious and elaborate
collection, somewhat after the manner of Coryat, of what he styled his
_Confutations of vulgar Errors_. These have come under the inspection of
some people since his death, and though it must be owned that they are
not to be read without some few grains of allowance, yet there is a
sufficiency of novelty to make them entertaining, and good sense enough
interspersed to render them in a certain degree respectable.
He there paradoxically asserts, (and I must believe it was his serious
opinion, for he was fond of repeating it amongst his intimates) that the
human understanding had been extremely narrowed and contracted, since
the art of printing had been discovered and carried into practice, for
that tradition was the mother of memory, and book-reading the murderer.
For modern history he had a sovereign contempt; he said it was a mass of
voluntary misrepresentations, and that no man could be trusted to write
the annals of his own time; strenuously contending, that it was from the
dark ages only we could strike out light to illuminate mankind. In the
early writers of the history of his own country he was profoundly
versed, and could adduce a host of authorities to prove that _Dominicus
Marius Niger_ and _Berosus_ were clearly warranted in their affirmations
that the island of Great Britain was as well and as fully stocked with
inhabitants long before the days of Noah, as any other country upon the
face of the globe.
Upon all these topics Wilson had not much to say: he knew his friend was
in the habit of disputing points, which others took for granted, and
taking many for granted, which by others were disputed; he was therefore
well contented to let him talk his fill so long as he was only talking
for fame, resolved on his own part to take no more for truth than he saw
fit; and, being always able to prove what he himself asserted, what he
heard asserted without proof he did not hold himself always bound to
believe.
He now perceived the time was come, when it would be no longer in his
power to parry the propensity so discoverable in his friend on this
occasion to treat him with a discussion on the antiquity of his family:
he was prepared to meet it, nay, he was just now disposed even to invite
it by some leading questions respecting the family bards, and the
authenticity of the facts by them recorded.
This was every thing that De Lancaster could wish for: it was at once a
salvo for his vanity, and a challenge to his veracity. Assuming
thereupon a more than ordinary degree of solemnity, he said--It is not
to the bards alone that I am indebted for all I know of those, who have
borne my name before I was in the world, though much is due to their
correct and faithful records of the times they lived in. By my own
perseverance in keeping hold of the clue, which, by the help of _Joannes
Bodinus_, _Franciscus Tarapha_, _Wolfangus Lazius_, and other equally
illustrious authorities, hath led me to the fountain head of my
genealogy, I have at this moment the consolation to reflect, that when
that most incomparable personage Samothes, (first son of Japhet, who was
third son of Noah) was monarch, patriarch and legislator of this my
native island, I had an ancestor then living in it, who shared the
blessings of his government, was also nearly allied to him, and stood so
high in his favour and confidence, as to be appointed president and
chief teacher of theology in that celebrated college of philosophers
called Samothei, which both _Aristotle_ and _Secion_ affirm to have been
established in the days of this good king, and so called in honour of
his name: but not this school only, the whole island took its name after
this excellent king, and was for a course of years, till the arrival of
Albion, called Samothea, as both the learned _Bale_ and _Doctor Caius_
concur in affirming--but perhaps to you, Colonel Wilson, these anecdotes
may be uninteresting; and, if so, I will pass them over.
By no means, my good friend, replied the colonel, for be assured that
all these family facts, which you have collected, and Moses in his
history seems to have overlooked, are to me perfectly new and extremely
entertaining.
Sir, resumed the narrator, Samothes was succeeded by his son Magus, from
whom the Persian Magi derive--(Wilson arched his eye-brows, as men are
apt to do on certain occasions)--and Sarron succeeded Magus, from whom
were derived a sect of philosophers amongst the Celtes, called
Sarronides. In the reign of Druis, continued De Lancaster, or, as
_Seneca_ writes it, Dryus, (which I take to be a corruption) my
ancestors transplanted themselves, together with the philosophers,
named after their sovereign Druids, into the isle of Anglesea, which, as
_Humphry Lloyd_ truly observes, was their chief place of abode, or, more
properly speaking, their pontifical headquarters. Bardus, the son of
Druis, succeeded to his father, and in his reign so famous was my then
existing ancestor for his performances on the harp, that we have ever
since borne that instrument by royal grant of this king as our family
coat of arms and crest. Now, let it be observed, added he, that many
families have coats of arms and crests, and can’t tell how they came by
them.
That is true, said the colonel, and one of those am I; but I beg pardon
for interrupting you: I pray you to proceed.
After a period of three hundred and ten years, the Celtes being subdued
by Albion the giant, and this island subjected to his dominion, he
changed its name of Samothea to that of Albion. This same Albion the
giant was, as every body knows, the fourth son of Neptune--
I am proud to hear it, cried the colonel, but I protest to you it is the
first I ever heard of him, or any of his family: I can now account for
our superiority in naval affairs; and I most heartily hope that the
trident, which this son of Neptune inherited from his father, shall
never in any time to come be wrested from his posterity of this island.
I hope not, replied De Lancaster; but I proceed with my narrative--Upon
the landing of Brute with his Trojans, (which was not above three
thousand years ago) I find it asserted by _Master Henry Lyte of
Lytescarie_, that this island was no better than a rude and barren
wilderness, _ferarum altrix_, a nursery for wild beasts, as he
slightingly denominates it; but I must take leave to tell that learned
antiquary, that his history, which he proudly styles _The Light of
Britain_, might more properly be called The Libel upon Britain; for I
will neither give credit to his lions, which he presumes to say overran
the island, nor implicitly acquiesce in his monstrous white bulls, with
shagged manes and hairy foreheads, forasmuch as I find no mention of
them in our King Edward the First’s letters to Pope Boniface, wherein
this very point of the landing of Brute in Albion is very learnedly
discussed. As for his lions, I treat that fable with contempt, for,
besides that King Edward does not mention them, I will never believe
there could have been one in the whole island, else how came King
Madan, the grandson of this very Brute, to be killed and devoured by
wolves in a hunting match, when it has been notorious from all time,
that the wolf will fly from the hunter, that has anointed himself with
lion’s tallow? Will any man suppose that the royal sportsman could have
failed taking that obvious precaution, had there been but a single ounce
of the fat of that animal in the whole kingdom?
Nobody will suppose it, said Wilson, and I am satisfied there were no
lions for the reason you assign: I must beg leave to doubt also if there
was any authority for his enormous white bulls, provided you are quite
sure that King Edward does not hint at them in his correspondence with
the Pope: but have we not lost sight of your ancestors amongst these
lions and the bulls?
Not so, replied De Lancaster, for upon the partition, which Brute made
of the kingdom between his three sons Locrine, Camber and Albanact, my
family is found in the Cambrian district upon the very spot, where Kray
Castle now stands; which will warrant me in saying without vanity that
few land-holders in the island can boast a longer tenure in their
possessions, this being not above sixty-six years after the taking of
Troy, and eleven hundred thirty and two years before the Christian æra.
That is quite sufficient, said the colonel: few post-diluvian families
can produce a better title.