began reckoning up his famous
ancestors, who had been Earls of Oxford for a hundred years past, and
knights for some hundreds of years more; but when my Lord Craven began,
he read over his family thus:--'I am William Lord Craven; my father was
Lord Mayor of London, and my grandfather was the Lord knows who;
wherefore I think my pedigree as good as yours, my lord.' The story was
merry enough, but is to my purpose exactly; for let the grandfather be
who he would, his father, Sir William Craven, who was Lord Mayor of
London, was a wholesale grocer, and raised the family by trade, and yet
nobody doubts but that the family of Craven is at this day as truly
noble, in all the beauties which adorn noble birth and blood, as can be
desired of any family, however ancient, or anciently noble.

In Italy, and especially at Venice, we see every day the sons of
merchants, and other trades, who grow in wealth and estates, and can
advance for the service of their country a considerable sum of money,
namely, 60,000 to 100,000 dollars, are accepted to honour by the senate,
and translated into the list of the nobility, without any regard to the
antiquities of their families, or the nobility of blood; and in all ages
the best kings and sovereign princes have thought fit to reward the
extraordinary merit of their subjects with titles of honour, and to rank
men among their nobility, who have deserved it by good and great
actions, whether their birth and the antiquity of their families
entitled them to it or not.

Thus in the late wars between England and France, how was our army full
of excellent officers, who went from the shop, and from behind the
counter, into the camp, and who distinguished themselves there by their
merit and gallant behaviour. And several such came to command regiments,
and even to be general officers, and to gain as much reputation in the
service as any; as Colonel Pierce, Wood, Richards, and several others
that might be named.

All this confirms what I have said before, namely, that trade in England
neither is nor ought to be levelled with what it is in other countries;
nor the tradesmen depreciated as they are abroad, and as some of our
gentry would pretend to do in England; but that, as many of our best
families rose from trade, so many branches of the best families in
England, under the nobility, have stooped so low as to be put
apprentices to tradesmen in London, and to set up and follow those
trades when they ha