Xll 



in the Bailiwick and Hundred of Stowting, and the Lathe of 

 Shipway, held of the Crown in capite by the service of six men 

 and a constable to defend the passage of the sea at Sandgate. 

 It had a chequered history before it fell into the hands of Thomas 

 of Eythorne, having been sold and given from one to another 

 to the Archbishop, to Heringods, to the Burghershes, to Pavelys, 

 Trivets, Cliffords, Wenlocks, Beauchamps, Nevilles, Kempes, and 

 Clarkes : a piece of Kentish ground condemned to see new faces 

 and to be no man's home. But from 1633 onward it became the 

 anchor of the Jenkin family in Kent ; and though passed on 

 from brother to brother, held in shares between uncle and 

 nephew, burthened by debts and jointures, and at least once 

 sold and bought in again, it remains to this day in the hands of the 

 direct line. It is not my design, nor have I the necessary know- 

 ledge, to give a history of this obscure family. But this is an 

 age when genealogy has taken a new lease of life, and become 

 for the first time a human science ; so that we no longer study 

 it in quest of the Guaith Voeths, but to trace out some of the 

 secrets of descent and destiny ; and as we study, we think less of 

 Sir Bernard Burke and more of Mr. Galton. Not only do our 

 character and talents lie upon the anvil and receive their temper 

 during generations ; bat the very plot of our life's story unfolds 

 itself on a scale of centuries, and the biography of the man is 

 only an episode in the epic of the family. From this point of 

 view I ask the reader's leave to begin this notice of a remark- 

 able man who was my friend, with the accession of his great- 

 grandfather, John Jenkin. 



This John Jenkin, a grandson of Damaris Kingsley, of the 

 family of Westward Ho!' was born in 1727, and married Eliza- 

 beth, daughter of Thomas Frewen, of Church House, Northiam. 

 The Jenkins had now been long enough intermarrying with 

 their Kentish neighbours to be Kentish folk themselves in all 

 but name ; and with the Frewens in particular their connection 

 is singularly involved. John and his wife were each descended 

 in the third degree from another Thomas Frewen, Vicar of 

 Northiam, and brother to Accepted Frewen, Archbishop of 

 York. John's mother had married a Frewen for a second 



