Sir Thomas does not let us off easily. After subjecting our credulity to a severe strain by one kind of statement, he unexpectedly increases the tension by another. Thus he says that an ancestor in the fifteenth century, Thomas Urquhart, had by his wife Helen Abernethie, daughter of Lord Salton, five-and-twenty sons, who grew up to manhood, and eleven daughters, all of whom found husbands. It would only have been kind of him to have reduced these numbers a little. But on one point he has spared us: we are not asked to believe that there were others who died in infancy. In a postscript Sir Thomas Urquhart explains that he has just given his readers a sketch of the history of his family, but hopes to furnish them with a complete narrative as soon as he obtains his release from his parole, and is at liberty to attend to this and to other matters of greater importance. The thought of the delightful book in store for mankind is so attractive to him that he cannot help dilating upon it. "In the great chronicle of the House of Urquhart," he continues, "the aforesaid Sir Thomas purposeth, by God's assistance, to make mention of the illustrious families from thence descended, which as yet are in esteem in the countries of Germany, Bohemia, Italy, France, Spain, England, Scotland, Ireland, and several other nations of a warmer climate, adjacent to that famous territory of Greece, the lovely mother of this most ancient and honourable stem."[192] He also intends not to omit the name of any family with which at any time the aforesaid house has contracted alliance. The concluding paragraph is very amusing; for in it our author promises to give proof of the statements he has made, by quoting from the works of respectable chroniclers of past ages, though the degree of certainty which the reader may thereby expect to reach falls short of that given by Holy writ or the works of Euclid. "And finally," he says, "for confirmation of the truth in deriving of his extraction from the Ionian race of the Prince of Achaia, and in the deduction of all the considerable particulars of the whole story, [the author] is resolved to produce testimonies of Arabick, Greek, Latin, and other writers of such authentick approbation, that we may boldly from thence infer consequences of no less infallible verity then [than] any that is not grounded on faith by means of a Divine illumination, as is the story of the Bible, or on reason, by vertue of the unavoidable inference of a necessary concluding demonstration, as that of the Elements of Euclid; which being the greatest evidence that in any narration of that kinde is to be expected, the judicious reader is bid farewel, from whom the Author for the time most humbly takes his leave."[193]