BOOKS.
Mat 8 11041 A BCE OF THE PEE RA G E.* THE fourth volume of Mr. Craik's work concludes his first series, by bringing down the 'subject to the Revolution of 1688. In point -of matter it is by fax the-most interestingof the whole. A good deal of this superiority may 'be -ascribe 'to the change in time Which the progress of the work has led to. As Mr. Craik inti- mates, we have more sympathy with the men of the seventeenth aentury than with those of preceding -was, because it -was with them that-our presentwunons andmodes elf thinking ori ted. With the 'nobles of 'the Plantagenet -and Tudor times we have so little in common, that they appear to belong to another race and -country. -The nobility of the Stuarts, and we may add of the lat- ter part of Elizabeth's reign, under -which most of the men of mark in James the First's were .formed, differs but little' rom those of a generation -with -which we :have been contemporary, except 'in a more formal stateliness of manner and a greater strength of cha- racter. For the present volume, too, there has been ampler bio- graphical materials.. Instead of eking out his space by letters or narratives that have little to do 'with his aubjects, Mr. Crailt is compelled to 'select information which is really 'biographical. 'The -reader's attention is no longer diverted to unimportant persons, of whom only .a genealogist -knows anything or cares to know.; the various notices have now a Amity .of -narrative and of purpose. They have also a more general bearing. The 'lives of remark- able men of action in any particular age will reflect the character- istics of that age ; for that which a few men can do to a great ee- gree is generally done by others in a smaller way. The Conquest was the epoch for founding territorial fortunes by the sword. Through the four centuries of Norman and Plantagenet sovereigns, the Church was the chief if not 'the only way in Which men could rise to great worldly eminence and position. 'Under the five`Tu- dors' the chief mode of .advancement was the. Sovereign's favour, .either, for services rendereder for royal caprice ; although great for-- lanes began to be made by .commerce, and dining,a portion of Eli- zabeth's time by adventure. Hence, the sixteenth 'century was distinguished by a spirit of personal submission and of comtl in- e, which tended somewhat to Arm the lustre of the brightest an greatest •characters ; More in the State, and Latimer in the -Church, -perhaps being the only men who escaped free from such pernicious influence. With the close of Elizabeth's reign and during the succeeding century, more independent courses of action were opened for men to rise in the world by commerce, by adventure, by law, and by Parliament. The Crown, indeed, was still very powerful (it is so even now) ; but the Royal favour was not VC es- -sential to the founder of a house, till he wished to be ennobled. In fact, distinction and popular favour began to be attainable by setting the Crown at defiance.
These features have not been very clearly perceived by Mr. Craik, and perhaps his ill-chosen title of Romance of the Peerage may in some degree have prevented their spontaneous display by diverting his attention to things that 'he thought romantic. In the present volume, however, there is less of this fault, because, as we have intimated, the biographical materials are fuller, and 'the life of the man is more distinctly brought out. The first subject, the great Earl of Cork, was the carver of his own enor- mous fortune, towards the close of 'Elizabeth's reign, by buying Irish lands that had been devastated by the rebels, which their owners in many cases were but too glad to ,sell, and which very few would purchase. Yet he was not a mere land-jobber, but a man of a large and liberal mind, who planted the waste he had purchased with Protestants, expended his own money freely but judiciously on all 'that aateanter ought to do, by reeking roads and erecting bridges for , and building castles for defence. Sir B hen Fox, the founder of the house of Holland, was a courtier, and rose by the personal regard of Charles the Second; but he earned 'the favour by good service, and was perhaps the only honest accountant (for he can hardly be called a financier)amongst the unprincipled courtiers of the Restoration. Sir William Petty, best known as a political arithmetician or statist, but inserted m The Romance ,cf the Peerage as the source of the Irish wealth of the house of Lansdowne, that took the name of Petty with the es- tates, was a man of less lofty spirit and capacious mind than Richard Boyle first Earl of Cork. Petty was, however, the founder of his own fortune more distinctly than his predecessor, andmade it in the same country by somewhat similar means ; purchasing the de- bentures of the soldiers in Cromwelrs army, and then 'buying the confiscated estates from improvident or foolish allottees. The so- called founder of the house of Phips, (now Phipps, Marquis of Normanby,) was a Massachusetts man, who got some money by a pertinacious search after 'a Spanish treasure-ship wrecked 'a hun- dred Tears before near the Bahamas, which he found at last : he was also Governor of the colony during a part of the witchcraft mania. It is difficult, however, to see how he can be considered the founder of the Mulgrave family. The direct ancestor of that house emerges into notice as a lawyer during the life of Sir Wil- ham Phips the colonist, and is ift.d a nephew either by blood or marriage; we have seen no proof of any relationship or connexion hatever. Probably the Mulgraves wished to trace their distinction to a.man of war and enterprise, rather than to a lawyer •of -whose father'nobody knows anything.
-*The Romance of the Peerage ; or Curiosities of 'Family History. By George Lillie Craik, Professor of History and of English Literature in the Queen's College, Belfast. Vol. IV Publiihed by Chapman and Hall. "Iris ertraordinary that it should not be known with certainty who was 'the father of a man who was living .im thercign of George the Second, mit -much more than a 'century ago, who was Lord'ehaneellorkof Ireland, whose 'grandson was an Irish Peer, and whose great-great-grandson-or descendant en only the fourth degree is a 'British 31arquis."
'These men, though not exactly falling into the category of the ro- mantic, were remarkable persons, who made their way to die- traction and were moreover types of the new fera. The founder of -the -Osborne family, who saved his master's baby daughter from ;drowning m•the Thames, and afterwards married her, is really a romantic story, brit too well known. The founders of the houses of Pomfret, Radnor, and Poltimore, belong to the first category of names.; but they were much smaller men, and there is but little interest attached to their lives. The story of Percy-the Trunk- maker—a man who 'on 'the faith of 'a surname, and possibly sorr...e familytradition, set up a elaim to the title and estates of the Perla of Northumberland on the death of the last male possessor in the seventeenth century—is a strange tale of delusion or attempted imposture ; for not one particle of proof can we see that he was related to the family at all, and his pretended descent Mr. Craik admits to be so unlikely as to be only possible. The three other notices want the freshness and originality of those we have men- tioned. They are regular stories of lords, or rather ladies —A.71/4i3 Clifford, the Heiress of the Percies, and Anne of Eucclench, Duchess of Monmouth ; the last of which is the most attractive of the 'three, but less from her own life than 'from the life and death of the Duke of Monmouth.
Every age of national peace seems to have some field for found- : ing settlements or making money. The Crusades were not alone prompted by a superstitious feeling; the adventurers were moved by ambition or avarice as much as by .devotion. In the-century and alaalf that intervened between Edward the Third and Henry the -Seventh, the principal European kingdoms were too much occupied by foreign or internal -wars, 'to leave -men leisure or necessity for pusInng -their fortunes. For a century or so under the Tudors, the Indies and America offered .a field for the adventurous. During the seventeenth century, Ireland was a greater field. forthe active, enterprising, and not over-scrupulous person, than India during the latter part of the last century, or the Colonies now. The 'fol- lowing is the account of how Pettymade his money. "In the latter part of the year 1 -..,,9 'he obtained the appointraent4 Physician to the Army in Ireland, which he retained for about seven years. A hundred pounds which he was allowed for outfit made him worth -about 5001. when he landed at Waterford, in September 1652; he had a .salary af twenty shillings a day, and he made by his practice About 4001. a year more. But these regular emoluments of his post were far from being all that he got out of it. Ireland was throughout the whole of (the seventeenth 'cen- tury the most tempting region of adventure for English ambition; it was what the New World had been in the sixteenth, and what India became in the eighteenth ; though what -made it so rich an El Dorado or land of gold was not so much its natural wealth as the succession of public calamities which it had been torn and crushed, the divisions and ever following suldn- gations which again and again threw it down a helpless prey for the spoiler. Petty writes his title at full length as Physician to the Army who had suppressed the rebellion begun in the year 1641, and .to the General of the same and the Head Quarters.' He then proceeds—'.About September 1654, I, perceiving that the admeasuroment of the lands forfeited by the afore- mentioned rebellion, and intended to regulate the satisfaction of the soldiers who had suppressed the same, was most insufficiently and absurdly managed, I obtained a contract, dated 11th December 1654, for making the said ad- measurement; and by God's blessing so performed the same as that I gained about 9000/. thereby ; which with the 500/. above mentioned, my salary cif twenty shillings per diem, the benefit of my practice, together with 600/. given me for directing an after-survey of the. Adventurers' lands, and 8001. more for two years' salary as Clerk of the Council, raised me an estate of about 13,0001. in ready and real money, at a time -when, without art, inte- rest, or authority, men bought as much land •for ten shillings inseal money as in this year 1685 yields ten shillings per annum rent above his Majesty's quit-rents.' Part of this money he kept in cash to answer emergencies ; with part he purchased the house and garden of the Earl of Arundel, in Rothbury, London; but the .greater part he invested in soldiers' debentures, with which he purchased lands in Ireland at the low price above'described. Aubrey affirms that these lands produced him a rental of 18,0001. a year."
The autobiographical particulars in this extract are taken from Petty's will ; a singular document, in which the writer gives an account of his life and fortunes, with the occasional insinuation of an opinion, as in this legacy 'to the poor, and his •convenient views on religion.
"As for legacies for thepoor, I am at a stand. 'As for beggars by trade and election, I.give them nothing; as for impotents by the hand of God, the public ought to maintain them; as for -those who have been bred to no call- ing or estate, they should be put upon their kindred'; as for those who get no work, the magistrates should cause them to be employed, which may be well done in Ireland, where is fifteen acres of improverible land for every head;; prisoners for crimes, by the Ki ; for debt, by their prosecutors. As .for those who compassionate the sufferings of any oict, let them relieve themselves by relieving such sufferers, that is, ,give them alms pro re natty and for God's sake relieve those several -species above mentioned where the above-mentioned obligees fail in their duties. 'Wherefore Lam contented
I
that 'have assisted all my poor relations, and put many into .a way af get- ting their •own bread, and have laboured in public works and by inventions, have sought out real objects of charity, and do hereby conjure All who par- take of my estate from time:to time to do the -same, at their peril. Never- theless, -to answer custom and to take the surer side, I give 201. to the most wanting of the parish wherein I die. • " As for religion, I die in the .profession of that faith and in the practice of such worship as I find established by the law of my 'country ; not berag able to believe what I myself please, nor to worship God better than by doing as I would be done unto, and observing the laws of my country, and ex- pressing my love and honour to Almighty God by such signs .and tokens as Are understood to be such by the people with whom I live, God knowingmy _heart even without any at all. '
The following character of Petty's prototype the Earl of Oink eontimies the theme of Irish 'adventure, though of :a loftier kind, and may be taken as a sample of Mr. Craik's best manner.
"The founder of the nobility of the Boyles, which was to spread so wide
both in the Irish and in the English peerage, began his remarkable career under Elizabeth, end had even got fairly Mto the road to wealth .and dis- tinction before the end of her reign; -butte, of .all men, both from the eir- eumstances of his history :and the character of his :mind, must he classed with his latest ratherthan with his earliest.contemporaries. Ile owed /ittie or nothing to the past; he was the ,sole maker of .his own greatness;, nor -did he ever show a .; *silica). to take either his rest or his stand even upon -any-vantage-ground " achhis own efforts 'had gained, as if it had been the -end of his ambition or 'a possession-Which could not be taken from'him ; it was only a position from which-he-might advmeeto something-higher. 'For- ward ' was the word with him.to the last ; forward,. if need were, At arty cost and any venture. It was the true spirit of movement and progress that animated him ; not at till-that of rapacioussecumulation. No man had ever
less of the ea.,ee'-‘smilecItimidity of -the mere gatherer of -wealth ; the fine thing-about hinr;wrel that,-eViden 'fat any time of his life, if he had been
stripped of all he had the-world; would' not have given a moment -to idle lamentation or.regret, but would have.instantly set to-work to recite- Wish himself with as-mua. activity.and energy, and the same cheerfulness and hope, as before. When, in his last days, this necessity aetually :threat- Tiled him, looketfitin-the face as firmly as any man ever did. He was one of those strong bright natures in whom the mind never grows old, and life burns in age with as intense a flame as in youth. It is this unconquer- able vitality that chiefly makes him interesting."
The facts in:the following.a=mary -of the Peerage.are curious, though the -philosophy founded on them may not be quite true. e time an adventurer enters ithe House of 'Peers, he is gene- ly old, -and probably satisfied—"in life's cool evening, satiate of applause.' The difficulty of gaining a step in the peerage however, worthy of consideration. "It might seem to be only the natural course of things, or what we should expect to happen not unfrequently, that the -man who has risen (otherwise than by suceomion) from being-a commoner to be a peer .should afterwards make his way from the lowest to the highest rank in the peerage. The same Impulse or buoyancy—whateverit may have consisted in, or come of, whe- -ther extraordinary-merit and services, or persevering ambition, or consum- mate dexterity-and insinuation, or mere, ood fortune, whichas earned him :so afar—ought, it may be thought, to carry him still (anther. Raving lifted him up to be a Baron or a Viscount, why should its action stop till it has elevated him to a Marquisate or a Dukedom-' -"But the factis,- that to surmount the barrier which separates the peer- -age from the rest of the community is, generally speaking, easier than to pass from one rank of the peerage to another. The structure narrows faster than it rises. Of its three tiers or stages, (for the Viscounts may be regarded As-only a higher-division of the Barons, and the Marquises as a subordinate hind of Dukee,) the lowest is nearly twice as spacious as the one next above it, and the latter three -times as spacious as the highest. At present the number of English -Barons and Viscounts is about two hundred and twenty, that of the Earls about one hundred and twenty, that of the Dukes and .Marquises about forty. Above two hundred and fifty English-peerages were conferred in the reign .of George the Third, but only three of them -were .Dukedoms. From the accession of George the Second, indeed, to the -pm- -sent day, a period of more than a hundred and twenty years (if we except the variation of the Newcastle patent in I756,) only-six hereditary Dukedoms have been oreated-;_und-of these, one (that of Montagu) is already extinct. -Of nearly.two.hundred-and -seventy Irish peers made in the-reign of -George the Third, only one was a Duke."
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