But for this plan to succeed two obstacles must be removed. The Parliamentarians held the seaport towns of Plymouth and Hull. The siege of each was undertaken; and the siege of each failed, mainly because Parliament held ‘the command of the sea.’ Thus, in the words of the great historian of the Great Civil War, ‘Hull and Plymouth saved the Parliamentary cause.’ XXIII. SOME ANCIENT EAST RIDING FAMILIES. ‘My ancestor came over with William the Conqueror,’ boasts one who is proud of his long line of ancestors. ‘So did mine’—‘and mine’—‘and mine’—might say a good number of us. Perhaps we could not prove our statement, but never mind. If we cannot prove that an ancestor of ours did come over with William the Conqueror, no one can prove that he didn’t. Of course we all of us had ancestors living somewhere or other in the year 1066, but there are very few who can identify those ancestors. How many of us can trace back our pedigree for a couple of hundred years? Few probably. But the family descent of some of our countrymen and countrywomen can be traced back for several hundred years. These are our nobles and landed gentry. Thus the descent of the present Baron Hotham of South Dalton can be traced back, through the Sir John Hotham who defied King Charles I., to an ancestor who in the twelfth century changed his name from De Trehouse to Hotham; that of Major Chichester-Constable of Burton Constable to an Ulbert Constable who lived in the reign of Henry I.; that of the Duchess of Norfolk to a William Fitz Nigel, who was Lord of Flamborough in the same reign; that of Mr. W. H. St. Quintin of Scampston Hall to a Sir Herbert de St. Quintin who was one of the companions-in-arms of William the Conqueror; and that of the Duke of Northumberland and Earl of Beverley to a Willelmus de Perci, who ‘came over with the Conqueror’ in the year 1067. * * * * * Proudest of all the proud nobles of the North were the PERCYS, whose descent from Willelmus de Perci has just been mentioned. Willelmus took his surname from the village of Perci in Normandy, and himself boasted a descent from one of the companions of that Rolf the Viking who sailed up the Seine in the year 912. _Als Gernons_ he was nicknamed, from his habit of wearing whiskers, whence the name ‘Algernon’ which was given generation after generation to the male members of the family. In the Domesday Book Willelmus de Perci is recorded as the tenant-in-chief of more than a hundred manors in Yorkshire, and of twenty-three in Lincolnshire. Among the former were Leconfield, Scorborough, and Nafferton; among the latter Immingham. Willelmus was one of the Norman knights who accompanied Duke Robert of Normandy in the First Crusade, and he died at Mountjoy within sight of the Holy City.