answer for; but how vividly such a life as this brings the age before us, how it clothes with flesh and blood the dry evidence of records which the patient industry of General Wrottesley has placed at the student's service! It is thus that the history of a family may minister to that of the nation, may teach us, as nothing else could teach us, the stirring stormy character of the Middle Ages in England.
'In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,' we read, 'the Gresleys were wealthy landowners with influence and position in all the three counties which converge near Drakelowe'; and indeed, about the end of the fourteenth, we find Sir John Gresley granting to his grandson all his manors in six counties. This grandson, Sir Thomas, was seven times returned as knight of the shire, and was 'almost certainly' present with his brother Sir John at Agincourt, and one of his daughters had the curious distinction of being nurse to King Henry VI. Lancastrian at this period, the Gresleys appear to have gone over to the White Rose in 1452, when Sir John took up arms for the Duke of York; but he did not become a decided Yorkist till after the accession of Edward IV. Like his son Sir Thomas after him, he skilfully contrived to retain his estates and position through all the troubles of the time; and William, the latter's son and successor, who signed himself 'Wyllyam Greysseley squyer,' was knighted at Lille by Henry VIII. in 1513, in reward doubtless for gallantry in the French campaign of that year.
When we come to Leland's day (circ. 1540) we find him writing of Sir George Gresley's 'very fayre mannor place and parke at Draykelo.' Sir George's son William was knighted at Queen Mary's coronation, and his grandson Thomas at the accession of James I. This brings us to Sir George, the first baronet. It is a striking fact that every one of his direct ancestors for twelve generations had received the honour of knighthood, a 'record' which, one would imagine, could not well be exceeded, if indeed it was equalled, by any others of those who received the new dignity. It was not unnatural therefore that he should have been one of those baronets of the first creation who protested on behalf of their degree against the king's decision on their precedence. If the portrait here reproduced, which has hitherto been assigned to the Sir George who died in 1548, is really that of the first baronet at the age of thirty, it must have been painted, we
