Excerpt from The Romance of the Peerage, Vol. 4: Or Curiosities of Family History The Four Volumes to which the present work has now extended comprise all the selections intended to be gleaned from so much of the Family History of the Peerage as lies beyond the great social as well as constitutional epoch of the Revolution of 1688. The First of the two Parts into which the subject naturally divides itself - the Ancient and the Modern History has been gone over and the work, as it stands, may be regarded as having a certain completeness, even if it should be carried no farther. In any case, it is to be remembered, it professes to present only a series of sketches. It does not contain every romantic or curious narrative which might be disinterred from the Family History of the Peerage in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Some have been purposely passed over, or touched upon as lightly as possible; others have been necessarily excluded to make room for those that have been given. Those have been preferred, for the most part, that have been the least taken up in the common Histories, or that, on the other hand, were invested with a higher interest by their relation to persons and events of national importance, or that admitted of having most new light thrown upon them. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.