Merchant John, then, came to London, where he seems to have prospered in his business, so much so as to make us wish that he had been furnished in his baptism with some other Christian name, for he became possessed of original shares in the Royal Exchange, the building of which King Charles the Second laid the foundation stone in 1667 to take the place of its predecessor of Queen Elizabeth’s time, which had been destroyed in the great fire of 1666. Unfortunately there was no mention of these shares in his will. There is no doubt that they were the property of this particular John, our immediate ancestor, and when my father and the late Lord Redesdale tried to prove their claim to them nobody doubted its justice, but they were defeated by the fact that they could not prove that there was no other John Mitford to whom they might have belonged; so there they lie in some mouldy old chest, more useless than dead leaves in autumn. Be this a lesson to those who call their sons John, or Thomas, or William, to give them some second and less usual name to make what, in armorial bearings, the heralds call a difference. [Illustration: WILLIAM MITFORD (HISTORIAN OF GREECE) _From an oil painting by John Jackson, R.A._] Of this John and his son William there is nothing to be said, but the son of the latter was another John, whose marriage on the 13th of September, 1740, with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Willey Reveley, of Newton Underwood and Throphill in Northumberland and Newby-super-Wiske in Yorkshire, played an important part in the history of our family, for to them were born two remarkable sons, William, the historian of Greece, and John, the first Lord Redesdale. Indirectly, too, this marriage was the cause of a goodly inheritance coming to Lord Redesdale in 1808. William Mitford,[7] who was born on the 10th of February, 1744, was my great-grandfather, and a man of many and various accomplishments, in his youth famous as one of the handsomest men of his day. Not only was he a profound scholar, but he had a great knowledge of art; he drew beautifully, and I have many of his water-colour paintings, which are of rare merit; his sketch-books recording his journeys in many parts of England are even now a joy to look through. The Royal Academy of his day recognized his worth by making him their historian, an office now filled by Lord Morley of Blackburn. In music, also, he was an expert, having a practical knowledge of several instruments, and so keen was he that when he was an old man, past seventy, he made a journey into Wales, a matter of several days in those posting times, in order to learn the principles of the triple Welsh harp.