a connection between the Clintons of Kencote and other families
of Clintons who have mounted higher in the world. It is the opinion of
later genealogists that he might have employed his energies to better
purpose, but, in any case, the family needs no further shelter than is
supplied by its own well-rooted family tree. You will find too, in his
book, the result of his investigations into his own pedigree, in which
the weakest links have to bear the greatest strain, as is often the case
with pedigrees.

It remains only to be said that the Squire, Edward Clinton, had
succeeded his grandfather, Colonel Thomas, of whom you may read in
sporting magazines and memoirs, at the age of eighteen, and had always
been a rich man, and an honest one.

Kencote lies about six miles to the south-west of the old town of
Bathgate. The whole parish, and it is an exceptionally large one,
belongs to the Squire, with a good deal more land besides in
neighbouring parishes. Kencote House is a big, rather ugly structure,
and was built early in the eighteenth century after the disastrous fire
which destroyed the beautiful old Tudor hall and nearly all its hoarded
treasures. This catastrophe is worth a brief notice, for nowadays an
untitled family often enjoys some consideration from the possession of
an old and beautiful house, and the Clintons of Kencote would be better
known to the world at large if they did not live in a comparatively new
one.

It happened at the dead of a winter night. Young William Clinton had
brought home his bride, Lady Anne, only daughter and heiress of the Earl
of Beechmont, that afternoon, and there had been torches and bonfires
and a rousing welcome. Nobody knew exactly how it happened, but they
awoke to find the house in flames, and most of the household too
overcome by the results of their merry-making to be of any use in saving
it. The house itself was burnt to a shell, but it was long enough in the
burning to have enabled its more valuable contents to have been saved,
if the work had been set about with some method. The young squire, in
night-cap, shirt, and breeches, whether mindful of his pedigree at that
time of excitement, or led by the fantastic spirit that moves men in
such crises, threw as much of the contents of his muniment room out of
the window as he had time for, and the antiquarians bless him to this
day. Then he went off to the stables, and helped to get out his horses.
My Lady Anne, who was only si