THE DUKES OF RUTLAND. 



No one who is familiar with the appearance of the 

 amiable and accomplished nobleman who to-day re- 

 presents the Dukedom of Rutland would ever imagine 

 that his ancestors had been fierce Border chiefs whose 

 deeds of robbery and murder at times provoked the 

 sharp punishment of outlawry. Yet such is the fact. 

 For, the descendants of Henry de Manneriis, Chamberlain 

 to Henry H, becoming possessed of lands in Northum- 

 berland in the reigns of the second and third Edwards, 

 imbibed the lawless spirit of the Border clans, and 

 outdid the most notorious of their moss-trooping, cattle- 

 reiving neighbours in the audacity of their marauding 

 forays. But, as time went on, this wild spirit grew tamer, 

 and Sir Robert Manners, the true founder of the line, 

 through which the Dukes of Rutland derive their wealth 

 and position, became under Edward IV a notable pillar 

 of that law and order which his forbears had defied. 

 A staunch Yorkist, he received as the reward of his adher- 

 ence to the White Rose, the Sheriffdom of Northumber- 

 land, and in that office wielded the power and main- 

 tained the state of a petty monarch. His marriage, too, 

 added largely to his wealth and influence, for his bride 

 was Eleanor, sister and co-heir of Edmund de Ros, 

 sixteenth Baron of that ilk, a Norman of the Normans, 

 possessed of vast lands in Leicestershire, Rutland, and 



