But wealth and honour, not even when allied with teeming descendants scattered around and settled in divers descents seemingly to defend it, can perpetuate a race, "There is no armour against fate," and to the mutation and decay, impartially entailed on human destiny, both peer and peasant alike are equally doomed. So, in Cornwall, for centuries, the generations of Arundell succeeded each other at Lanherne and Trerice, the great twin stems of this noble stirpe, and spread and rooted themselves, in divers offshoots located near. But gradually that name, although surnamed _the Great_, and their descendants, one after another, dwindled away under the breath of Time, until its sound became an echo and a tradition only, in the regions of its olden home, and finally became extinct. In 1701, the _Great_ Arundell of Lanherne (from them the dormant Arundells beneath our feet were descended), last of his name of the elder house, died, and a distaff only followed him to his grave. She was wedded and the mother of a son,--but his name was not Arundell,--but on him his grandfather settled all his estates, and the heritage of his antient name. Again the succession was denied, daughters only were born to him, and distaff succeeded distaff. One of them sleeps below, presumably in life a happy and unique fate befell her, as by her marriage with Lord Arundell was united the two descents of Lanherne and Wardour, and her name will probably recur to our thoughts again before our little story ends. Seventy years--just a spell of human life--later, in 1773, the final representative of the almost equally distinguished descent of Trerice (they had been ennobled by Charles II. in 1664), John, fourth and last Baron Arundell of Trerice, passed to that bourne, from which no traveller, however distinguished, returns. It is curious that both he, and his noble wife--who was a sister of the Earl of Strafford and pre-deceased him--both found their sepulchre far eastward of their native home, and repose in the chancel of the church of Sturminster-Marshall in Dorset, not very far from this. But to return to Arundell of Tisbury--yet we must still digress for a time--and to this chancel, where, beginning three centuries ago, and descending from him of whom we propose to have something to say, lie the ashes of the ancestors of the green branch of this antient stock located not far off, still nobly upholding its olden name and fame, although in its earlier days it had to struggle fiercely through some of the direst vicissitudes that environ human life, to perpetuate its existence.