In the story that has to be told, proof will emerge indisputably that, without affected indifference to the prizes of a public career, his passion was for work, not for its attendant honours; that he valued office as an opportunity to advance, not himself, but the causes which he had at heart; and that when further tenure of power was denied him, he abated no jot of his lifelong labours. The main purpose of his life was 'to revive true courage in the democracy of his country,' [Footnote: Throughout these volumes single quotation marks without further indication signify an excerpt from the Manuscript Memoir (compiled by Sir Charles, as explained in the Preface, from original diaries and letters), or (as here) from notes left with that document, but not embodied in it. Double quotation marks signify Correspondence and Memoranda found in the despatch-cases and letters sent by correspondents, etc.] and his immediate object always and everywhere to defend the weak. For the protection of toilers from their taskmasters at home and abroad, in the slums of industrial England and in the dark places of Africa, he effected much directly; but indirectly, through his help and guidance of others, he effected more; and in the recognition of his services by those for whom he worked and those who worked with him he received his reward. Charles Wentworth Dilke was born into a family of English gentlefolk, which after a considerable period of comparative obscurity had won back prosperous days. The baronetcy to which he succeeded was recent, the reward of his father's public services; but a long line of ancestors linked him to a notable landed stock, the Dilkes of Maxstoke. This family was divided against itself in the Civil Wars; and the brother of the inheritor of Maxstoke, Fisher Dilke, from whom Sir Charles descended, was a fanatical Puritan, and married into a great Puritan house. His wife, Sybil Wentworth, was granddaughter to Peter Wentworth, who led the Puritan party of Elizabeth's reign: she was sister to Sir Peter Wentworth, a distinguished member of Cromwell's Council of State. Property was inherited through her under condition that the Dilke heirs to it should assume the Wentworth name; and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Fisher Dilke's descendants were Wentworth Dilke or Dilke Wentworth from time to time. In George II.'s reign one Wentworth Dilke was clerk to the Board of Green Cloth at Kew Palace: his only son, Wentworth Dilke Wentworth, was secretary to the Earl of Litchfield of the first creation, and left an only son, Charles Wentworth Dilke, who was a clerk in the Admiralty. This Dilke was the first of five who successively have borne this combination of names. [Footnote: For convenience a partial table of descent is inserted, showing the five Dilkes who bore the same combination of names.