Ages, in the very different England of its time.

Well, Ramsey was the equivalent of half Westminster, and young
Williams swallowed it whole. He was not given it outright, but the
price at which he bought it is significant of the way in which the
monastic lands were distributed, and in which incidentally the
squirearchy of England was founded. He bought it for less than three
years' purchase. Where he got the money, or indeed whether he paid
ready money at all, we do not know. If he did furnish the sum down we
may suspect that he borrowed it from his uncle, and we may hope that
that genial financier charged but a low rate of interest to one whom
he had so signally favoured.

Contemporaneously with this vast accession of fortune, which made
Williams the principal man in the county, Cromwell, now Earl of Essex,
fell from favour, and was executed. The barony was revived for his son
five months after his death and was not extinguished until the first
years of the eighteenth century, but with this, the direct lineage of
the King's Vicar-General, we are not concerned: our business is with
the family of Williams.

Young Williams did not imitate his protector in showing any startling
fidelity to the fallen. He became a courtier, was permanently in
favour with the King and with the King's son, and died established in
the great territorial position which he had come into by so singular
an accident.

His son, Henry, maintained that position, and possibly increased it.
He was four times High Sheriff of the two counties; he received
Elizabeth, his sovereign and patroness, at his seat at Hinchinbrooke
(one of the convents), and in general he played the role with which we
are so tediously familiar in the case of the new and monstrous
fortunes of our own times.

He was in Parliament also for the Queen, and it was his brother who
moved the resolution of thanks to Elizabeth for the beheading of Mary
Queen of Scots.

He died in 1603, and even to his death the alias was maintained.
"Williams (alias Cromwell)" was the legal signature which guaranteed
the validity of purchases and sales, while to the outer world CROMWELL
(alias Williams) was the formula by which the family gently thrust
itself into the tradition of another and more genteel name. The whole
thing was done, like everything else this family ever did, by a
mixture of trickery and patience; he obtained no special leave from
Chancery as the law required; he simply used the