There were certain peculiarities which remove Dodd from the position of one of the crowd of Puritan divines: a certain cheerfulness, hilarity, and also good practical common sense; and certainly his descendant, Dr. Walter Pope, an ingenious man and no mean poet, is not to be charged with over much of the severity and strictness of the Puritan life. The later Pope, however, would not be over forward to reveal his connection with either Dodd or Dr. Walter; else, if he really did descend from one of the many daughters of the Rector of Fawsley, he might have claimed to himself a descent which, on fair evidence, can be traced to the very depths of the antiquity of English families, the Puritan divine being well known to be of the very ancient family of Dodd of Shockledge, in Cheshire. A long account of him is given by Dr. Samuel Clarke. We are now prepared to enter upon the question of Pope's descent from a younger son of the family, which was ennobled by the Irish title of Earl of Downe. This was all which he claimed for himself; and I should be unwilling to think him so foolish and disingenuous as to make this assertion without some good grounds; though possibly, if he or his father had collected evidence, they might not have been able to show how specifically they did so descend, with the precision now required by the College of Arms. But probabilities are strongly in favour of the assertion. The title of Earl of Downe did not free the family of Pope from the obscurity in which it had lived till one member of it had become greatly enriched by aiding in the measures which established the Reformation in England. It will be at once perceived, by any one who may look into what is shown respecting them, that Sir Thomas Pope had no grace of ancestry to boast of. His father, whose will we have, is the first of the family of whom anything is known, and the will shows that he was a man of small possessions, living at Deddington, in Oxfordshire. Not that he was quite of the lowest class, as he desires to be buried within the walls of Deddington Church: in fact, he appears to have belonged to the rank of superior yeomanry, families who placed daughters in monasteries and sons in the Church, or sent them to make their fortune in the cities. He made no pretension to the distinction even of a gentleman's coat-armour; for Sir Thomas Pope, when he had acquired wealth, took a grant from Barker in 1535. Warton has traced his course with some assiduity; but we may compare with what he says the evidence of a person who had good means of knowing Sir Thomas Pope's circumstances. "He was the son of a poor and mean man in Deddington, in Oxfordshire, within four miles of Banbury, and over against Somerton, and was born there; was brought up, when a boy, as a scribe and clerk by Mr. John Croke, one of the Six Clerks when Wolsey was Chancellor, and so lived with Mr. Croke till after the Suppression. The Lord Audley made a motion to Mr. Croke to help him to some ready and