a general
principle, that the more extended the ancestry, the greater the amount
of violence and vagabondism; for in ancient days those two amusements,
combining a wholesome excitement with a promising means of repairing
shattered fortunes, were at once the ennobling pursuit and the healthful
recreation of the Quality of this land.

Consequently, it is a source of inexpressible comfort and happiness
to find, that in various periods of our history, the Chuzzlewits were
actively connected with divers slaughterous conspiracies and bloody
frays. It is further recorded of them, that being clad from head to
heel in steel of proof, they did on many occasions lead their
leather-jerkined soldiers to the death with invincible courage, and
afterwards return home gracefully to their relations and friends.

There can be no doubt that at least one Chuzzlewit came over with
William the Conqueror. It does not appear that this illustrious ancestor
'came over' that monarch, to employ the vulgar phrase, at any subsequent
period; inasmuch as the Family do not seem to have been ever greatly
distinguished by the possession of landed estate. And it is well known
that for the bestowal of that kind of property upon his favourites,
the liberality and gratitude of the Norman were as remarkable as those
virtues are usually found to be in great men when they give away what
belongs to other people.

Perhaps in this place the history may pause to congratulate itself upon
the enormous amount of bravery, wisdom, eloquence, virtue, gentle birth,
and true nobility, that appears to have come into England with the
Norman Invasion: an amount which the genealogy of every ancient family
lends its aid to swell, and which would beyond all question have been
found to be just as great, and to the full as prolific in giving birth
to long lines of chivalrous descendants, boastful of their origin, even
though William the Conqueror had been William the Conquered; a change of
circumstances which, it is quite certain, would have made no manner of
difference in this respect.

There was unquestionably a Chuzzlewit in the Gunpowder Plot, if indeed
the arch-traitor, Fawkes himself, were not a scion of this remarkable
stock; as he might easily have been, supposing another Chuzzlewit
to have emigrated to Spain in the previous generation, and there
intermarried with a Spanish lady, by whom he had issue, one
olive-complexioned son. This probable conjecture is strengthened,