This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1850. Excerpt: ... ANNE CLIFFORD. The story of Richard Bamfylde may call to mind another relating to a more famous family name; that of Henry Clifford, the Shepherd Lord, which has been made familiar to all readers of our modern poetry by Wordsworth's stirring chant, the "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle." The Barony of Clifford, created in the last year but one of the thirteenth century, still survives, indebted for its long endurance, like most of the few other subsisting English peerages of great antiquity, to the circumstance of its being, as a Barony by writ, descendible to and through females, --a peculiarity, however, which, while it makes the honour almost indestructible, tends to prevent its continuance in the same line, or at least the same paternal name. Such a peerage may circulate from hand to hand, or from one family to another, almost like a landed estate or a sum of money. It is rather matter of surprise that so many of our old honours thus circumstanced should have remained sa long in the male line of the original grantee, detained only by the right of preference which attaches tc the male heir when standing in equally near relationship with a female. For the entire effect of the arrangement is not, as is apt to be assumed, simply to sustain and continue the hereditary dignity which would otherwise drop and become extinct: in many cases the peerage which is so carried into a new line would, but for its descendibility through females, have been transmitted, it may be for many more generations, in the old one. A younger brother, for instance, or his male representative, the head of the original house, is excluded in favour of a daughter or her descendant, male or female, in whom the original family name has for the most part been lost in another. The early...