The families of both parents were of great antiquity, and directly descended from Crusaders; the names of Sir Stephen and Lady Glynne are on the Plantagenet Roll. Ancestors had been settled at Glynllifon, Carnarvonshire, in very ancient times. The founder of the Hawarden branch of the family, Sir John Glyn (1603-66), won distinction as a lawyer both under Cromwell--he was Lord Chief Justice from 1655 to 1659--and Charles II. Notwithstanding his support of the Parliamentary party, he seems to have been a Monarchist at heart and to have urged Cromwell to take the title of King; and we know that he served quite happily as King’s Serjeant under Charles II., even acting for the Crown in the prosecution of Sir Henry Vane for high treason in 1662. It was through him that Hawarden came into the Glynne family, for he purchased it at a nominal sum when it was sequestered in the Civil Wars. The castle itself was nearly in ruins and was never rebuilt. In 1752 Sir John Glynne, Mrs. Gladstone’s great-grandfather, acquired through marriage the adjoining property of Broad Lane, and the house belonging to it, with much rebuilding and various additions, became the Hawarden Castle with which the name of Gladstone is always associated. The ruins of the old original castle still exist and form a picturesque object in the grounds. Sir Stephen Glynne died in 1815, and the care of the four children, two boys and two girls, all under six years old, devolved on the mother. She returned to her father, and she and the children lived with him in Berkeley Square, at Audley End, and at Billingbere. It was only after his death that she resided at Hawarden, where she was assisted in the duties connected with the estate by her brother, the Rev. the Hon. George Neville, to whom her husband, shortly before his death, had presented the living of Hawarden. A journal is still in existence in which Lady Glynne made notes about her children during the years 1815-20. She describes Catherine as beautiful, high-spirited, and strong-willed.