THE ANCESTOR 237 The death of Lord Fitzwilliam removes a great noble from the ranks of the English peerage. Head of the house of Wentworth-Fitzwilliam he inherited in Yorkshire the seat and extensive estates of the Wentworths, though not the repre- sentative of that historic house. His Irish barony of 1620 and earldom of 171 6 were modern as compared with the antiquity of his own Fitzwilliam stock. But its origin became unluckily the sport of pedigree-makers, and a weekly paper in its obituary notice took occasion to resuscitate these fables, heading its information * Special * : — The founder of the family was Sir William Fitz Godric, a Saxon, cousin to King Edward the Confessor. His son, Sir William Fitzwilliam, an ambassador to the Court of William Duke of Normandy, would seem to have joined the Conqueror against Harold, as for his bravery at the battle of Hastings the Norman leader gave him * a scarf from his own arm,* which now forms the christening robe of every heir to the earldom. The nobleman who accom- panied William held estates in Yorkshire, but it was not until 1782 that Wentworth Woodhouse came into the family . . . Tradition has it that he erected the stone cross in the main street of Sprotborough, upon which the well-known words were inscribed : — Whoso is hungry and listes to eate. Let him come to Sprotburgh for his meate. And for ane night and for ane daye His horse shall have baith corne and haye, And no man shall aske when he goeth awaye.
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On this story we need only quote Professor Freeman's comments :^ — It is perhaps needless to say that all this is a pure fable ; but one really stands aghast at the utterly shameless nature of the fable. Sir William Fitz- william is supposed to be an English ambassador at the Court of Normandy. The inventor of the fable had so little knowledge as not to see that the Sir, the first William, the Fitz, and the second William was, each of them by itself, as much proof as could be needed that a man of whose name they formed any part could not have been an Englishman of the days of Edward the Con- fessor. Furthermore it would seem that the inventor thought it honourable for an ambassador sent to a foreign prince to join that prince in an invasion of his own country, and to bear arms in battle against his own sovereign. As for the scarf from William's own arm, we need hardly look in the Bayeux Tapestry to prove that the Duke who knew so well how to wield his mace of iron did not cumber his arm with any frippery of scarves on the day of the great battle. It is worth while to mark that this imaginary traitor is described as the grandson of Godric. The choice of the name is lucky ; there was a traitor Godric in the fight at Maldon, and . . . those who like traitors for their forefathers may, if they think good, make choice of him. ^ Contemporary Review (1877), xxx. 29.
