As already observed, the noble family of Talbot have been seated in their present locality for a period of nearly seven hundred years! According to the pedigree of the family, drawn up with every appearance of accuracy by Sir William Betham, Richard Talbot, the second son of Richard Talbot, Lord of Eccleswell and Linton, in Herefordshire, who was living in 1153, having accompanied King Henry II. into Ireland, obtained from that monarch the lordship of Malahide, being part of the two cantreds of Leinster, in the neighbourhood of Dublin, which King Henry had reserved, when he granted the rest of the province to Richard Earl of Strongbow, to be held as a noble fief of the crown of England. It is at all events certain, as appears from the chartulary or register of Mary’s Abbey, now in the British Museum, that this Richard Talbot granted to St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin certain lands called Venenbristen, which lie between Croscurry and the lands of Hamon Mac Kirkyl, in pure and perpetual alms, that the monks there might pray for the health of his soul and that of his brother Roger, and their ancestors; and that he also leased certain lands in Malahide and Portmarnoc to the monks of the same abbey. From this Richard Talbot the present Lord Talbot de Malahide descends in the twentieth generation, and in the twenty-fourth from Richard Talbot, a Norman baron who held Hereford Castle in the time of the Conqueror. The noble Earls of Shrewsbury and Talbot are of the same stock, but descend from Gilbert, the elder brother of Richard, who was Lord of Eccleswell and Linton, and was living in 1190. There can be no question, therefore, of the noble origin of the Talbots de Malahide, nor can their title be considered as a mushroom one, though only conferred upon the mother of the present lord; for Sir William Betham shows that his ancestor, Thomas Talbot, knight and lord of Malahide, who had livery of his estate in 1349, was summoned by the sheriff of Dublin to the Magnum Concilium, or Great Council, held in Dublin in 1372, 46 Edward III., and again to the Magnum Concilium held on Saturday, in the vigils of the holy Trinity, 48 Edward III., 1374, by special writ directed to himself by the name of “_Thome Talbot, Militis_.” He was also summoned by writ to the Parliament of Ireland in the same year. If therefore it could be ascertained that this Thomas Talbot actually took his seat under that writ, it would be clear that his lineal heir-male and heir-general, the present baron, has a just claim to the honours and dignity which he has so recently acquired. The manor of Malahide was created by charter as early as the reign of King Henry II., and its privileges were confirmed and enlarged by King Edward IV. in 1475. This, we believe, still remains in the possession of the chief of the family, but various other extensive possessions of his ancestors passed to junior branches of his house, and have been long alienated from his family.