The Jest Of Ancestry
LORD CHESTERFIELD placed among the portraits of his ancestors two old
heads, inscribed Adam de Stanhope, and Eve de Stanhope: the ridicule is
admirable.
Old Peter Leneve, the herald, who thought ridicule consisted in not
being of an old family, made this epitaph for young Craggs, whose father
had been a footman: Here lies the last who died before the first of his
family! Old Craggs was one day getting into a coach with Arthur Moore,
who had worn a livery too, when he turned about, and said, Why, Arthur,
I am always going to get up behind; are not you?
The Gordons trace their name no farther back than the days of Alexander
the Great, from Gordonia, a city of Macedon, which, they say, once
formed part of Alexander's dominions, and, from thence, no doubt, the
clan must have come!