CHAPTER VI.

_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.