expert clerk, to employ in the King's service about the Suppression business; and Mr. Croke preferred Thomas Pope unto him, being then his household servant in livery, which was the first step of all his following good fortunes. This Mr. Croke was my wife's great-grandfather; and I have heard her grandfather, Sir John Croke, often say, that at his christening, Thomas Pope, then his father's man, carried the bason; and Sir Thomas Pope, by his will, gave this Sir John Croke some of his best raiment as a token of his love unto the house and family." Previously to the time when Sir Thomas Pope made the acquisitions, the greater part of which he disposed of so nobly in the foundation of his college at Oxford, his family made no marriages with the higher gentry. In short, there is nothing to interfere with the probability of the Rector of Thruxton being of a branch of the family, nor anything in it which the Downe family could look upon as degrading. We must not suffer the glare of the coronet to mislead us: we are speaking of times before the Popes were ennobled. The Earls of Downe were one of the many families who rose into distinction out of the spoils of the ancient Church; but the rank given to them, and the wealth they possessed, to say nothing of any personal merit, would be a reasonable defence for Pope to fall back upon under the circumstances. The earldom, we may observe, had long been extinct. The first earl was the son of John Pope of Wroxton, who was brother of Sir Thomas (who left no issue). The dignity was created by Charles I. in 1628, not till then. The first peer was succeeded by his grandson, the second earl, who died at Oxford in 1660. This is the earl of whom Pope speaks, whose daughter and heir married the Earl of Lindsey. The third earl was uncle to the second, and in his son, who died in 1668, the title was lost, having existed for forty years only. We have Pope's direct testimony that his ancestors were of Oxfordshire, and we find them about Oxford in the time of Elizabeth. I think I have said sufficient to show that his claim to a distant kindred with the Popes of Wroxton, raised _per saltum_ from the rank of yeomen, is affected with no improbability on the score of disproportion of rank. The surname of Pope is not uncommon, but chiefly found in the southern counties. No other family of that name, I believe, is ever stated to have claimed consanguinity with the founder of Trinity College and the family of the Earls of Downe. We proceed now to speak of the Poet's maternal descent. II. THE TURNERS. Of gentle blood, part shed in honour's cause,-- _Each_ parent sprung. In the note on this passage, Pope expresses a kind of preference for his descent on the mother's side, calling the Turners an ancient family, which means that they possessed hereditary wealth through many generations.