LORD LILFORD 



any transaction or event which would go to ex- 

 plain that construction being put upon the name.' 



It must suffice therefore to know that a 

 fighting, cattle-raiding, presumably Celtic ' clan,' 

 said to trace its descent from the kings of Wales, 

 emerges out of darkness into a glimmer of twi- 

 light in the person of its representative in the 

 fifteenth century. 



William Powys of Ludlow, born in 1464, 

 bears a tame Christian name, although his sur- 

 name, derived, we know not how, from the land on 

 which his forefathers dwelt, is stamped for ever as 

 unmistakably Welsh. From this William Powys 

 descended three generations of the Powys family, 

 undistinguished units in the great mass of for- 

 gotten humanity, living and dying, in common 

 with the majority of the human race, without 

 other memorial than the more or less fleeting 

 impress of their personality upon the minds of 

 friends and neighbours. 



At the end of the seventeenth century we come 

 to a pair of Powys brothers who achieved some 

 measure of legal distinction, became respectively 

 judges of the King's and Queen's Benches, and 

 received knighthood at the hands of William 



