Cromwell; that he, and his family after him, signed ‘alias Williams’; and that Leland, an accurate man, said and printed, in the official scene where Richard himself was living and conspicuous, He was born in Glamorganshire: these three facts are indubitable;—but to these three we must limit ourselves. For, as to the origin of this same ‘alias Williams,’ whether it came from the general ‘Williamses of Berkshire’[1], or from ‘Morgan Williams a Glamorganshire gentleman married to the sister of Thomas Cromwell,’ or from whom or what it came, we have to profess ourselves little able, and indeed not much concerned to decide. Williamses are many: there is Richard Cromwell, in that old Letter, hoping to breakfast with a Williams at Ely,—but finds both him and Pollard gone! Facts, even trifling facts, when indisputable may have significance; but Welsh Pedigrees, ‘with seventy shields of arms,’ ‘Glothian Lord of Powys’ (prior or posterior to the Deluge), though ‘written on a parchment eight feet by two feet four, bearing date 1602, and belonging to the Miss Cromwells of Hampstead,’[2] are highly unsatisfactory to the ingenuous mind! We have to remark two things: First, that the Welsh Pedigree, with its seventy shields and ample extent of sheepskin, bears date London, 1602; was not put together, therefore, till about a hundred years after the birth of Richard, and at a great distance from the scene of that event: circumstances which affect the unheraldic mind with some misgivings. Secondly, that ‘learned Dugdale,’ upon whom mainly, apart from these uncertain Welsh sheepskins, the story of this Welsh descent of the Cromwells seems to rest, has unfortunately stated the matter in two different ways,—as being, and then also as not being,—in two places of his learned Lumber-Book.[3] Which circumstance affects the unheraldic mind with still fataler misgivings,—and in fact raises irrepressibly the question and admonition, ‘What boots it? Leave the vain region of blazonry, of rusty broken
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INTRODUCTION
