Marmaduke, my master, was Lord Grand Treasurer of Ireland, and High

Seneschal of the sovereignty of Knaresborough in the county of York? Do

you know that the Lord High Chamberlain, which is an office hereditary

in the family of the Dukes of Ancaster, dresses the king for his

coronation, and receives for his trouble forty yards of crimson velvet,

besides the bed on which the king has slept; and that the Usher of the

Black Rod is his deputy? I should like to see you deny this, that the

senior viscount of England is Robert Brent, created a viscount by Henry

V. The lords' titles imply sovereignty over land, except that of Earl

Rivers, who takes his title from his family name. How admirable is the

right which they have to tax others, and to levy, for instance, four

shillings in the pound sterling income-tax, which has just been

continued for another year! And all the time taxes on distilled spirits,

on the excise of wine and beer, on tonnage and poundage, on cider, on

perry, on mum, malt, and prepared barley, on coals, and on a hundred

things besides. Let us venerate things as they are. The clergy

themselves depend on the lords. The Bishop of Man is subject to the Earl

of Derby. The lords have wild beasts of their own, which they place in

their armorial bearings. God not having made enough, they have invented

others. They have created the heraldic wild boar, who is as much above

the wild boar as the wild boar is above the domestic pig and the lord

is above the priest. They have created the griffin, which is an eagle to

lions, and a lion to eagles, terrifying lions by his wings, and eagles

by his mane. They have the guivre, the unicorn, the serpent, the

salamander, the tarask, the dree, the dragon, and the hippogriff. All

these things, terrible to us, are to them but an ornament and an

embellishment. They have a menagerie which they call the blazon, in

468

The Man Who Laughs