One such instance presents itself in the varied fortunes of the COURTENS. [Sidenote: THE COURTENS; THEIR ADVENTURES AND ENTERPRISES.] That family attained an unusual degree of commercial prosperity, and attained it with unusual rapidity. In the second generation it seemed—for a while—to have struck a deep root in our English soil. It owned lands in half-a-dozen English counties, and its alliance was sought by some of the greatest families in the kingdom. In the next generation its fortunes sank more rapidly than they had risen. In the fourth, the last of the COURTENS was for almost half his life a wanderer, living under a feigned name, and he continued so to live when at length enabled to return to his country. The true name had been preserved only in the records of interminable litigation—in England, Holland, India, and America—about the scattered wreck of a magnificent property. But the enterprise of the family, in its palmy days, had planted for England a prosperous colony. It had opened new paths to commerce in the East Indies, as well as in the West. And its last survivor found a solace for many ruined hopes in the collection of treasures of science, art and literature, which came to be important enough to form no small contribution towards the eventual foundation of the British Museum. [Sidenote: THE FOUNDER OF THE FAMILY.] In 1567 William COURTEN, a thriving dealer in linens and silks, living at Menin in Flanders, was together with his wife, Margaret CASIER, accused of heresy. COURTEN was thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, but contrived both to make his escape into England, and to enable his wife soon to join him. He established himself in London, in the same business which had thriven with him at home. [Sidenote: Family Records of the Courtens; in MS. Sloane, 3515, _passim_. (B. M.)] His wife shared in its toils, and by skilfully adapting her exertions to those tastes for finery in the families of rich citizens which were now striving with some success against the rigour of the old sumptuary laws made the business more prosperous than before. It expanded until the poor haberdasher of 1567 had become a notability on the London Exchange. In 1571 a son was born to the exiles. This second William COURTEN was bred as a merchant rather than as a tradesman. He had good parts, and seems to have started into life with a passion for bold enterprise. His early training in London was continued at Haerlem, and there he laid a foundation for commercial success by marrying the daughter of Peter CROMMELINCK, a wealthy merchant. First and last, his wife brought him a dowry of £40,000, of which sum it was stipulated by the father’s will that not less than one half should be laid out in the purchase of lands in England, to be settled on the eldest son that should be born of the marriage. [Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM COURTEN AND HIS MERCANTILE PURSUITS.]