Landed Properties and Proprietors

Landed Properties and Proprietors: "Several other families have held land since the twelfth century, including Tremlett, Tichborne, Plowden, Fulford, Lucy, Mallet, Medlicott and Saltmarshe. They never ranked, as they do not rank today, among the great ennobled families, the Cecils, Thynnes, Cavendishes and Comptons, who date from post reformation days, nor even the FitzRoys, Churchills, Bentincks and Wellesleys, who date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They are older by far than these, and less distinguished. The first qualification is explained by the deficiency of the last. Many of them owe their survival to their very lack of past renown. By not aspiring to royal favours they ran no risks of attainder and forfeiture, consequent upon the disgrace of many an over-ambitious mediaeval and renaissance name, and few risks of losing all they possessed in later centuries at the gaming-table and on the turf. Whereas in 1618 Sir Walter Ralegh had his head cut off and his estates confiscated, and whereas in 1741 Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, came to it premature end through dissipation, after being obliged to sell Wimpole and his unrivalled collections in order to pay his debts, the Plowdens still live unostentiously at Plowden in Shropshire, and the Fulfords at Great Fulford in Devon ~ two manor houses of moderate size as they have always done since the twelfth century."