the chief line of Somersetshire Gournays, married, in 14 Rich. II., George de la More, from whom the Earls of Egmont descend. Hence, there is a great deal of information about these Gournays in that curious book, the "History of the House of Yvery," some notice of which will be found in my paper on "British Family Histories," reprinted in the present volume from my Essays from the Quarterly Review.

While the Gournays of the West of England are represented by the Earls of Egmont, those of the Eastern counties are still represented by male descendants, the head of whom takes the designation of "Gurney of Keswick." The ancestor of this family was Walter de Gournay, a landholder in Suffolk of the time of Stephen. Our reasons for believing this Walter to have been a son of the Gerard de Gournay of the First Crusade, have been indicated already, at page 117. His son William held lands which had belonged to Gerard by the tenure of parage,— a clear proof that he was of the Gournay blood; and the dates show that he could not be of the Gournay blood in any remoter degree. William de Gournay's descendants became Gournays, Gurnays, or Gurneys, of Swathings and West Barsham, in Norfolk, and existed there for many generations as Norfolk squires, whose succession and alliances may be seen in the excellent county history of Blomefield, and elsewhere. Sir John Gournay was sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1399, and knight of the shire for Norfolk in the Parliament of 1404. The family, like other Norfolk families, had a town house in Norwich, in which they passed the winter, and as generations rolled by, and the estates of the house of West Barsham diminished, its younger sons began to seek their fortunes by entering into trade in the ancient county town so long distinguished as a seat of commerce. Among these was a Francis Gurney, of James the First's time, the direct progenitor of the present family of Keswick. He was a sixth son of Henry Gurney, Esq., of West Barsham, in whose will he is mentioned; and he and his children are entered in the Herald's Visitation of the City of London for 1633. He had begun life in Norwich as an agent for some of

the Norfolk county gentlemen, and banker, and had afterwards established himself in the parish of St. Benet Finck, in London, as a merchant, and a member of the Merchant Taylors' Company. The line was carried on by his second son, Francis Gurnay, of Maldon in Essex, mentioned in the Herald's Visitation for Essex in 1664, whose eldest son, John Gourney, or Gurney, settled at Norwich. This John Gurney, the first of the family to join the Society of Friends, realised a considerable fortune in commerce. His son, Joseph Gurney, acquired Keswick, and was great-grandfather of the late Hudson Gurney, Esq., F.R.S., of Keswick, the chief of the name. Verily, one family, like one man," plays " many parts" in its

time!

66

BRITISH FAMILY HISTORIES.

T

HE re-action in favour of what may be called the literature of feudalism, which has been. going on ever since the publication of "Percy's Reliques," has as yet done but little towards supplying us with good histories of private families. We have had ballads, diaries, collections of papers almost innumerable. The invaluable writings of Scott have everywhere made the ancient life of Europe far more intelligible to us, and more affectionately regarded by us, than it was a hundred years ago. Indeed there was need of some such influence, after the predominant tone of the eighteenth century. The worldly wits of that period, though they had, among their unquestionable merits, much good sense and good nature, seem to have lost both when they meddled with their own ancestors. If they wanted an heroic example, they

were willing enough to go to Plutarch; but they thought, with Gray, that the age of Froissart was "barbarous." Voltaire treated the Crusaders as knaves and madmen. Horace Walpole sneered at Sir Philip Sidney. Lord Chesterfield, forgetful of the saying of that maternal grandfather, Lord Halifax, from whom he derived so much of his peculiar wit, that "the contempt of scutcheons is as much a disease in this age as the over-valuing them was in former times"-delighted in ridiculing pedigree and heralds. One of his cleverest essays in the World was against birth. He hung up two portraits, "Adam de Stanhope" and "Eve de Stanhope," among his ancestors. And he said, with a great deal of humour, to a herald of that time, "You foolish man, you don't understand your own foolish business!" Voltaire, Walpole, and Chesterfield represent thousands of inferior minds; and this way of talking on such subjects was long a predominant fashion. The higher class of wits have now given up ridiculing the traditions of Europe, though the taste for joking on the old text "Stemmata quid faciunt?" is still prevalent among those Cockneys who fancy that a sentiment which has survived the ridicule of Juvenal is likely to fall before the wags of the nineteenth century! People are more ready, however, in spite of these deriders, to inquire what good family histories we possess than they were some time ago; partly because of the taste for anti

quities diffused by Scott and others, partly because the feeling against such studies was carried so much too far, and partly because, after some generations of experience, we begin to see that our modern men are not so superior to the ancient gentlemen as they often loudly proclaim themselves to be.

The uses of good family histories are many and various. In the first place, they are excellent illustrations of general history, inasmuch as the history of a few families of a certain rank is the history of their whole times. Then they embody a vast number of those personal details and bits of local colour which 'help the narrator to describe an age, and the reader to feel as if he had lived in it. They have a human, a

Their poetic value is

tender, and a personal interest. not to be forgotten; that by which they enable us to trace character from generation to generation, and touch the mind with admiration or awe as it watches the conduct of a high race in the varying events of successive ages. To the families themselves such histories are of the highest importance, and by them they ought to be treasured as were by the old Romans those laudationes, some of which were extant in Cicero's time, and were used at family funerals, and which they preserved "ad memoriam laudum domesticarum et ad illustrandam nobilitatem suam." That robust people, we need scarcely say, set the highest store on family