ar,
the patronymic of the Earls Beauchamp, is, of course, a translation of
the Norman Le Bailli, and its bearers are "probably descended from
William, a Norman of distinction"; while at least one family of Brownes
springs lineally from "Turulph, a companion of Rollo," founder of the
Ducal House of Normandy. After this, one learns with meek resignation
that the honourable cognomen Smith is derived from _Smeeth_, "a level
plain"; and that some, at least, of the Parker family had for ancestors
certain De Lions, who flourished bravely under William the Conqueror.

Another favourite vanity is to glorify a name by the prefix De:

"a particle which has been all but unknown in England
since the first half of the fifteenth century, and which
has never possessed in Great Britain that nobiliary
character which the French nation have chosen to assign
to it. De Bathe, De Trafford, and the rest are
restorations in the modern Gothic manner."

It is, we fear, a similar vanity which has displaced such modest
surnames as Bear, Hunt, Wilkins, Mullins, Green, and Gossip in favour of
De Beauchamp, De Vere, De Winton, De Moleyns, De Freville, and De Rodes.

This ludicrous yearning for a Norman ancestry is responsible for many of
the absurdities in the pedigrees of even our most exalted families. Thus
it is that we find such statements as this widely circulated, and
accepted with a quite childlike credence:

"This noble family (Grosvenor) is descended from a long
train in the male line of illustrious ancestors, who
flourished in Normandy with great dignity and grandeur
from the time of its first erection into a sovereign
Dukedom, A.D. 912, to the Conquest of England. The
patriarch of this ancestral house was an uncle of Rollo,
the famous Dane...."

And again:

"The blood of the great Hugh Lupus, Duke (_sic_) of
Chester, flows in the Grosvenor veins."

This pleasing fiction still rears its head unabashed in spite of all
attempts to destroy it; in its honour the late Duke of Westminster was
actually named "Hugh Lupus" at the baptismal font, while his younger
brother was labelled Richard "de Aquila"; and yet it is an indisputable
fact that the Grosvenor ancestors cannot be carried beyond a Robert de
Grosvenor, of Budworth, who lived a good century after the Conquest, and
who has no more traceable connection with Rollo than with the Man in
the Moon.

The Ducal