ut the reign of James the First,
the three harmless schallop-shells were changed by Edmund Gibbon esq.
into three ogresses, or female cannibals, with a design of stigmatizing
three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an unjust law-suit.
But this singular mode of revenge, for which he obtained the sanction of
Sir William Seagar, king at arms, soon expired with its author; and,
on his own monument in the Temple church, the monsters vanish, and the
three schallop-shells resume their proper and hereditary place.

Our alliances by marriage it is not disgraceful to mention. The chief
honour of my ancestry is James Fiens, Baron Say and Scale, and Lord High
Treasurer of England, in the reign of Henry the Sixth; from whom by the
Phelips, the Whetnalls, and the Cromers, I am lineally descended in
the eleventh degree. His dismission and imprisonment in the Tower were
insufficient to appease the popular clamour; and the Treasurer, with his
son-in-law Cromer, was beheaded(1450), after a mock trial by the Kentish
insurgents. The black list of his offences, as it is exhibited in
Shakespeare, displays the ignorance and envy of a plebeian tyrant.
Besides the vague reproaches of selling Maine and Normandy to the
Dauphin, the Treasurer is specially accused of luxury, for riding on
a foot-cloth; and of treason, for speaking French, the language of our
enemies: "Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm,"
says Jack Cade to the unfortunate Lord, "in erecting a grammar-school;
and whereas before our forefathers had no other books than the score and
the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the
king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be
proved to thy face, that thou hast men about thee, who usually talk of
a noun and a verb, and such abominable words, as no Christian ear
can endure to hear." Our dramatic poet is generally more attentive to
character than to history; and I much fear that the art of printing was
not introduced into England, till several years after Lord Say's
death; but of some of these meritorious crimes I should hope to find my
ancestor guilty; and a man of letters may be proud of his descent from a
patron and martyr of learning.

In the beginning of the last century Robert Gibbon Esq. of Rolvenden
in Kent (who died in 1618), had a son of the same name of Robert, who
settled in London, and became a member of the Cloth-workers' Company.
His wife