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great Vetriponts and Cliffords as a race often hanging by a thread : 

 now on the chances of a single child arriving at manhood, and 

 now on the contingency of a single man coming out alive from a 

 deadly feudal conflict ; and sometimes on the apparently hopeless 

 chance of the reversal of attainter and confiscation ; and at last, as 

 we have seen, the illustrious line becoming extinct, and the Tuftons 

 of Kent taking their place ; and then, as an instance of the irony 

 of fate — no sooner had they attained that social eminence, than 

 they appeared to inherit their predecessors' mutability — four 

 brothers succeeding in seven years, and all dying without direct 

 heirs. The last of these brothers, Thomas, however enjoyed with 

 great honour the estates and titles for fifty-nine years, but dying in 

 1742 without male heirs, the baronies of Clifford, Westmorland, 

 and Vescey fell into abeyance. It was in his time that Brougham 

 Castle was dismantled, and the oak timbers and lead sold ; tradition 

 says they were used in the re-building of Penrith Church, and the 

 old nolchings and mortices to be seen in the timbers of the roof 

 and galleries appear to confirm the tradition. 



