An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 17 and inaccurate. He was always grumbling, growling, and gibing about Dryasdusts, but he was also always using their work ; and the real grievance he bad against them was that they bad not done more to smooth bis way, and save him the pains and labour of the original research he disliked so much. His Letters of Cromwell is, perhaps, his best known work, but I have myself discovered over a hundred unpublished letters of Cromwell which escaped him. My counter-grumble done, I may say that the Steward descent of Cromwell will not hold water for a moment. Probably no illusion has taken firmer hold of the public mind than the romance which gave Cromwell a royal descent through the Stewards, and enabled people to moralize on the fact, much in the same way as he maundered over the Squire letters. The pedigree began with "Sir Alexander Steward the fierce," who is said to have killed a lion with a ragged club in 1385, in France; and whose son is said to have been taken prisoner, and brought to England with James II. of Scotland in 1405. In the Genealogist, new ser., vol. i., p. 34, I have gone into this vain tale at great length, and shown that the Steward from whom Cromwell's mother descended came from an unimportant English family called Styward of Swaffham, who were settled there in 1378, and who were in no way connected with Scotland at all. Since my paper J. H. Round and Mr. Bain, the Scotch genealogist, have still further massacred the myth. My diary for 1857-1865 is chiefly a record of natural history notes and athleticism, and though interesting to me would not be so to the readers of this book. On 15th May I was taken violently ill with pleurisy from which I barely recovered with my life, after having ten leeches sucking at me, and while convalescent went and stopped at Wimbledon village. On 22nd June I returned to school and to hard work in Phene's field in Oakley Street, the •'house" in which was completed on the 18th November. Phene lived to be a very old man, dying only two or three years ago. He bad a very large and curious and most heterogeneous assort– ment of antiquHies, none of which be ever allowed to be seen. He was a most eccentric but able architect, though chiefly known for his collections as to the Phcenicians. C