Memoirs of My Life and Writings | Page 3

the city; and
from this branch I do not blush to descend. The law requires some
abilities; the church imposes some restraints; and before our army and
navy, our civil establishments, and India empire, had opened so many
paths of fortune, the mercantile profession was more frequently chosen
by youths of a liberal race and education, who aspired to create their
own independence. Our most respectable families have not disdained
the counting-house, or even the shop; their names are enrolled in the
Livery and Companies of London; and in England, as well as in the
Italian commonwealths, heralds have been compelled to declare that
gentility is not degraded by the exercise of trade.
The armorial ensigns which, in the times of chivalry, adorned the crest
and shield of the soldier, are now become an empty decoration, which
every man, who has money to build a carriage, may paint according to
his fancy on the panels. My family arms are the same, which were
borne by the Gibbons of Kent in an age, when the College of Heralds

religiously guarded the distinctions of blood and name: a lion rampant
gardant, between three schallop-shells argent, on a field azure. I should
not however have been tempted to blazon my coat of arms, were it not
connected with a whimsical anecdote. About the reign of James the
First, the three harmless schallop-shells were changed by Edmund
Gibbon esq. into three ogresses, or female cannibals, with a design of
stigmatizing three ladies, his kinswomen, who had provoked him by an
unjust law-suit. But this singular mode of revenge, for which he
obtained the sanction of Sir William Seagar, king at arms, soon expired
with its author; and, on his own monument in the Temple church, the
monsters vanish, and the three schallop-shells resume their proper and
hereditary place.
Our alliances by marriage it is not disgraceful to mention. The chief
honour of my ancestry is James Fiens, Baron Say and Scale, and Lord
High Treasurer of England, in the reign of Henry the Sixth; from whom
by the Phelips, the Whetnalls, and the Cromers, I am lineally descended
in the eleventh degree. His dismission and imprisonment in the Tower
were insufficient to appease the popular clamour; and the Treasurer,
with his son-in-law Cromer, was beheaded(1450), after a mock trial by
the Kentish insurgents. The black list of his offences, as it is exhibited
in Shakespeare, displays the ignorance and envy of a plebeian tyrant.
Besides the vague reproaches of selling Maine and Normandy to the
Dauphin, the Treasurer is specially accused of luxury, for riding on a
foot-cloth; and of treason, for speaking French, the language of our
enemies: "Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the
realm," says Jack Cade to the unfortunate Lord, "in erecting a
grammar-school; and whereas before our forefathers had no other
books than the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used;
and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a
paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face, that thou hast men about thee,
who usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words, as
no Christian ear can endure to hear." Our dramatic poet is generally
more attentive to character than to history; and I much fear that the art
of printing was not introduced into England, till several years after
Lord Say's death; but of some of these meritorious crimes I should hope
to find my ancestor guilty; and a man of letters may be proud of his
descent from a patron and martyr of learning.

In the beginning of the last century Robert Gibbon Esq. of Rolvenden
in Kent (who died in 1618), had a son of the same name of Robert, who
settled in London, and became a member of the Cloth-workers'
Company. His wife was a daughter of the Edgars, who flourished about
four hundred years in the county of Suffolk, and produced an eminent
and wealthy serjeant-at-law, Sir Gregory Edgar, in the reign of Henry
the Seventh. Of the sons of Robert Gibbon, (who died in 1643,)
Matthew did not aspire above the station of a linen-draper in
Leadenhall-street; but John has given to the public some curious
memorials of his existence, his character, and his family. He was born
on Nov. 3d, 1629; his education was liberal, at a grammar- school, and
afterwards in Jesus College at Cambridge; and he celebrates the retired
content which he enjoyed at Allesborough, in Worcestershire, in the
house of Thomas Lord Coventry, where John Gibbon was employed as
a domestic tutor, the same office which Mr. Hobbes exercised in the
Devonshire family. But the spirit of my kinsman soon immerged into
more active life: he visited foreign countries as a soldier and a traveller,
acquired