230 THE ANCESTOR Burke s Peerage to this day. Moreover, as Henry II. died 713 years ago (11 89), one wonders why the same work only claims for the Talbots that the Malahide estate has ' continued for upwards of 650 years in the male heirs of him on whom it had been originally conferred by Henry II.*
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While we are on the subject of the Talbots we may notice an extraordinary assertion which is also found in Burkey namely, that ' it is remarkable too that of the ancient seignorial estates in Ireland whose lords were vested with the dignity of parlia- mentary barons not one can be traced to have been held directly and immediately of the Crown but the lordship of Malahide.* In spite of the use of italic type, one has no occasion to go further than a few miles from Malahide to find in the Hill of Howth a case at least as striking and really more in point. For Lynch has given a charter of John, in the lifetime of Henry II., confirming to Amauri de St. Lawrence that historic estate as his father had held it before him. And the Lords of Howth have held it from that day to this, and have been from an early time parlia- mentary barons of Ireland, which the Talbots of Malahide have not. It seems strange that all these facts should have been unknown, as they must have been, to an Ulster King-of- Arms. 'if: % % It appears to be a common belief with Anglo-Irish families that their ancestors — whose names they always know — all landed in Ireland in 1172. They might do well to remember that the founder of the ancient and historic house of Butler belonged to the next generation, and that the Anglo-Norman settlement in Ireland, of which the history has yet to be written, extended over many years. The delusion to which we refer is found in a peculiarly acute form in the case of the Esmondes, with the history of whose alleged ancestor we deal elsewhere.
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In one of the most widely read of recent biographies, ^he Life of Lord Russell of Killowen (1901), the same delusion recurs. But it is only fair to add that the Norman origin of
- the chief * appears tp have been forced upon him by his
determined biographer. ' What am I ? * he meekly enquires.
