most men like it to be known that an
ancestress, whose memory is kept green, once enjoyed royal favour. No
man tells his guests that they are eating stolen food from stolen plate
in a stolen house; but many will admit, without imposing a bond of
secrecy, that their great-great-grandfathers went to India to seek their
fortune and apparently found it. "He that goes out an insignificant boy
in a few years returns a great Nabob," said Burke, without dwelling on
the intermediate stages. They will admit almost as readily that their
grandfather reluctantly parted with land to the end that railways might
be built, or that their fathers ran the blockade and supplied the South
and the slave-owners, hazardously and romantically, with munitions of
war.

The Neave fortunes had their origin in the character and position of
Lord Chancellor Crawleigh; and history has dealt faithfully with him.
John, first baron, acquired the Abbey from a misguided supporter of the
'15 and left it with sufficient means for its upkeep to his grandson
William, the second baron and first viscount, who built on sure
foundations. Common sense and a certain practical alertness in the
halcyon days of the Enclosure Acts did nothing to diminish the patrimony
of Charles, fourth baron, third viscount and first earl, though the
estate came to be temporarily encumbered when the good fellowship of
John, the second earl, won him the costly regard of the Regent. At a
time when the House of Commons was pulling one of its long faces over a
periodical schedule of the Prince's debts, a Garter became vacant; and
His Royal Highness, with no other means of marking his affectionate
gratitude, secured it for his friend with a further step to the coveted
rank of marquess. Thereafter the public life of the family was
characterized by honour and integrity; and the Garter, re-bestowed as
soon as surrendered, became a habit. The second marquess held a sinecure
under Lord Aberdeen; another flitted to and fro in shadowy retirement as
a Lord-in-Waiting; a third, exploring the United States for the
broadening of his mind, married an American wife.

The union infused so much new blood into the declining, short-lived
stock that there seemed no limit to the energy and success of the heir.
Charles, fifth marquess, was a member of parliament in his twenty-second
year, an under-secretary when he was twenty-six and Governor-General of
Canada before he was thirty-five. Thereafter, having got h