NOBLE HOUSES

Evening Star, Issue 21722, 17 May 1934, Page 16

NOBLE HOUSES

SOME HUMBLE ORIGINS There are few romances more picturesque and striking than the stories ot : some of ouv noble families. j*eoplc who were early awake one spring morning in the year 1560 might have scon a small, roughly-clad boy waiting anxiously hy a -Yorkshire road side for a carrier’s car to take him the first stage on his way to London. The lad was known well in tlio district as “ Willie Cra von,” son of a small Bnnisall farmer, and grandson of old John Craven, of Appletrccwick. But none anticipated that, just forly years after, that adventurous boy would he Sheriff, a ml, eleven years la ter, Lord Mayor of the City of London; that his son would win an carl’s coronet and wed live sister of a Stuart king; and that lie would found a family of great nobles who, as Earl of his native Craven, would mate with the bluest blood in all tbe land. A few years before “ Willie Craven ” fared forth into the world of adventure a well-to-do farmer of the name of John Spencer was breeding andsclling cattle in comfortable obscurity at Wormleighton, Hampshire. In a petition to King Henry VIII., in 1519, be is described as a grazier who made his “ lyving by the bredc of cattell in otiier places.” Happy in his pastures, and counting with pride the well-won gold ol the cattle markets, ho never, surely, dreamt that from him would spring a great line of belted earls to shed ■ lasting lustre on the name lie boi'o so humbly. In the hitter years of Queen- Elizabeth’s reign, William Ward, who had , served his apprenticeship to a jeweller at Heal, in Staffordshire, ventured to London, where he opened a shop. Ho prospered so' well that he found the Queen’s favour, ami was-appointed her jeweller From him springs the present Furl Dudley. Late in the fourteenth century a William Grcvillo was learning the mysteries of wool-stapling in London and enjoying the unfettered, if riotous, freedom of an apprentice’s life. He was a son of William Grevillc, of Campden, who must hate been a man of small substance, for lie was able to oblige bis Sovereign with a loan of 300 marks. William Grcville, the light-hearted apprentice, was the founder of the noble and exalted house of the Earls of'Warwick. Tbe family name of the Marquises of Bath barely conceals tbe origin of the Thynnes. When John Botfelde, whose ancestor in the seventh degree was an under-forester in Shropshire, married and made his home at Church Stretton, he became host of the princifpal inn of that town, and was known throughout the district as “ John o’ th’ Inne,” a name which more exalted and refined generations have modified into “ Thymic.” This is a most interesting example of the history which lurks, often unseen, m many surnames. Tbe progenitor of the Earl's Cowpcr was a John Lo Cooper, who followed the useful trade bis name indicates at Strode, in the parish of Slinfold, Sussex. .11 was John’s great-great-grandson _ William who cut himself adrift from ancestral pursuits and went to London, where ho turned his ’prentice days to such profit that he became an alderman and, with tbe favour of Charles 1., won a title. The ancestral Paget, founder of, the noble Ivonse of Anglesey, was Scrjeant-at-Maee to the City of London. The father of the first Lord Kensington was content with the useful., if unremunerativc, role of a purser, Hugh Smithson, on whom the great ducal house of Northumberland rests in the male line,, began his London life as an apothecary’s apprentice. Mr Luke White, from whom the Barons Annaly come, was a Dublin bookseller when fortune, in the form of a lottery prize, first smiled on him. The ancestor of the Lords Carrington was a Mr Smith, a- Nottingham draper of repute.