baronets bear as an augmentation to their coats-of-arms
the royal badge of Ulster--a Bloody Hand on a white field. It was in apt
reference to this that a famous Whip, on learning that a baronet of his
party was extremely anxious to be promoted to the peerage, said, "You
can tell Sir Peter Proudflesh, with my compliments, that we don't do
these things for nothing. If he wants a peerage, he will have to put his
Bloody Hand into his pocket."

For the female mind the baronetage has a peculiar fascination. As there
was once a female Freemason, so there was once a female baronet--Dame
Maria Bolles, of Osberton, in the County of Nottingham. The rank of a
baronet's wife is not unfrequently conferred on the widow of a man to
whom a baronetcy had been promised and who died too soon to receive it.
"Call me a vulgar woman!" screamed a lady once prominent in society when
a good-natured friend repeated a critical comment. "Call me a vulgar
woman! me, who was Miss Blank, of Blank Hall, and if I had been a boy
should have been a baronet!"

The baronets of fiction are, like their congeners in real life, a
numerous and a motley band. Lord Beaconsfield described, with a
brilliancy of touch which was all his own, the labours and the
sacrifices of Sir Vavasour Firebrace on behalf of the Order of Baronets
and the privileges wrongfully withheld from them. "They are evidently
the body destined to save this country; blending all sympathies--the
Crown, of which they are the peculiar champions: the nobles, of whom
they are the popular branch; the people, who recognize in them their
natural leaders.... Had the poor King lived, we should at least have had
the Badge," added Sir Vavasour mournfully.

"The Badge?"

"It would have satisfied Sir Grosvenor le Draughte; he was for
compromise. But, confound him, his father was only an accoucheur."

A great merit of the baronets, from the novelist's point of view, is
that they and their belongings are so uncommonly easy to draw. He is Sir
Grosvenor, his wife is Lady le Draughte, his sons, elder and younger,
are Mr. le Draughte, and his daughters Miss le Draughte. The wayfaring
men, though fools, cannot err where the rule is so simple, and
accordingly the baronets enjoy a deserved popularity with those
novelists who look up to the titled classes of society as men look at
the stars, but are a little puzzled about their proper designations.
Miss Braddon alone has drawn more baronets, virtuous and vicious,