ff, and Tipstaff. He also had a younger brother who was twice
married, and had five sons; viz., Distaff, Pikestaff, Mopstaff,
Broomstaff, and Raggedstaff. As for the branch from whence you spring,
I shall say very little of it, only that it is the chief of the Staffs,
and called Bickerstaff, _quasi_ Biggerstaff; as much as to say, the
great staff, or staff of staffs; and that it has applied itself to
astronomy with great success, after the example of our aforesaid
forefather. The descendants from Longstaff, the second son, were a
rakish disorderly sort of people, and rambled from one place to another,
till in Harry II.'s time they settled in Kent, and were called
Long-tails, from the long tails which were sent them as a punishment for
the murder of Thomas-a-Becket, as the legends say; they have been always
sought after by the ladies; but whether it be to show their aversion to
popery, or their love to miracles, I can't say. The Wagstaffs are a
merry thoughtless sort of people, who have always been opinionated of
their own wit; they have turned themselves mostly to poetry. This is the
most numerous branch of our family, and the poorest. The Quarterstaffs
are most of them prize-fighters or deer-stealers. There have been so
many of them hanged lately, that there are very few of that branch of
our family left. The Whitestaffs[177] are all courtiers, and have had
very considerable places: there have been some of them of that strength
and dexterity, that five hundred of the ablest men in the kingdom[178]
have often tugged in vain to pull a staff out of their hands. The
Falstaffs are strangely given to whoring and drinking: there are
abundance of them in and about London. And one thing is very remarkable
of this branch, and that is, there are just as many women as men in it.
There was a wicked stick of wood of this name in Harry IV.'s time, one
Sir John Falstaff. As for Tipstaff, the youngest son, he was an honest
fellow; but his sons, and his sons' sons, have all of them been the
veriest rogues living: it is this unlucky branch has stocked the nation
with that swarm of lawyers, attorneys, serjeants, and bailiffs, with
which the nation is overrun. Tipstaff, being a seventh son, used to cure
the king's evil; but his rascally descendants are so far from having
that healing quality, that by a touch upon the shoulder, they give a man
such an ill habit of body, that he can never come abroad afterwards.
This is all I know of the line