n in the main street of the
village of Appletrewick, in Yorkshire, a single-storey cottage, little
better than a hovel, which was the cradle of the noble family of Craven.
It was from this humble home that William Craven, the young son of a
husbandman, fared forth one day in the carrier's cart to seek fortune in
far-away London town. Like many another boy who has taken a stout heart
and an empty pocket to the Metropolis as his sole capital, he fought his
way to wealth; and before he died he was addressed as "My lord," in his
character of London's chief magistrate. The eldest son of this peasant
boy won fame as a soldier, became the confidential friend of his
Sovereign, and was created in turn a Baron, a Viscount, and Earl of
Craven. He died unwed, and all his wealth and dignities passed to a
kinsman who, like himself, traced his descent from the peasant stock of
Appletrewick.

The Earls of Denbigh have for ancestor one Godfrey Fielding, who served
his apprenticeship in London city, made a fortune as a Milk Street
mercer, and was Lord Mayor when Henry VI. was King. Five years later,
we may note in passing, London had for chief magistrate Godfrey Boleyn,
whose great-grand-daughter wore the crown of England as Queen Elizabeth.

The present Earl of Warwick, whose title was once associated with such
names as Plantagenet, Neville, Newburgh, and Beauchamp, has in his veins
a liberal strain of 'prentice blood. The founder of the family fortunes
was William Greville, citizen and woolstapler of London, who died five
centuries ago, after amassing considerable wealth; while another
ancestor was Sir Samuel Dashwood, vintner, who as Lord Mayor entertained
Queen Anne at the Guildhall in 1702, and found a husband for his
daughter in the fifth Lord Broke.

The father of the noble house of Dudley was William Ward, the son of
poor Staffordshire parents, who was apprenticed to a goldsmith and made
a fortune as a London jeweller.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century Nottingham had among its
citizens a respectable draper named John Smith, who, it is said, made
himself useful to his farmer customers, in the intervals of selling
tapes and dress materials to their wives, by helping them with their
accounts. John lived and died an honest draper, and never aspired to be
anything else; but his descendants were more ambitious. From drapers
they blossomed into bankers and Members of Parliament; and in 1796
George III. departed for once