THE ANCESTOR 227 Gregory Taronensis writes of * the Barons of Burgundie, as well Bishops as other Leudes/ and other writers mention it in equally good company. That such statements as these should appear at the present day is almost incredible. So essentially Norman was the word Vavassour — which meant, by the way, not a baron, but a baron's under-tenant — that, even after the Norman Conquest, it never succeeded, as Baron did, in making good its position here. Can it really be necessary, in these days, to explain that Thane or (Thegn) was the true Anglo-Saxon word and had nothing in the world to do with the Danes ?
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The modern Baron may be gratified to learn that his official predecessor found himself at one time in such excellent com- pany as that of ' Leudes ' ; but why is Gregory ' Taronensis ' — beneath which grotesque disguise, we may explain, there masquerades Gregory of Tours who wrote in the sixth century — made to write of ' Burgundie ' in Elizabethan English } And why, for the matter of that, is even the Empress Maud made to use the cryptic tongue of ' Ye Olde Englyshe Fancye Fayre * } We read that ' the Empress Maud, daughter and heir to King Henry I., created an earl in the following words : — I, Maud, daughter of King Henry and ladee {sic) of the Englishmen, doe give and grant unto Geoffrey de Margravill {sic) ... to be Earle of Essex ... as an Earle should have thorow his countrie in all things.' That the name of the grantee was Mandeville {Magna Villa) not ' Margravill,* need scarcely be pointed out. It is but right to add that the Editor has again to acknowledge 'the continued valuable assistance afforded by Charles H. Athill, Esq., Richmond Herald,' who has, we presume, approved of the statement, in the same instructive Introduction, that ' It should always be borne in mind that, strictly speaking, every one bearing duly authorized arms is equally entitled to be styled noble," be he Peer, Baronet, Knight, or Gentleman.'
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One of the leading illustrated weekly papers last January devoted a whole page to an illustrated article on the Talbots of Malahide, from which we extract the following : — In the year 1172, Richard Talbot, son of Lord Talbot of Eccleswell and Linton, crossed the Irish Channel in the suite of Henry II. . . . This Richard, who is mentioned in Doomsday Book, obtained from Plantagenet {sic) for the services of his sword, the Lordship of Malahide as a fief of the Crown, and from Edward IV. the Admiralship of the adjoining seas . . .
