I] MY RELATIVES AND ANCESTORS 5 



Roberts, whose son lived many years at Epsom, and this 

 family is also extinct by the death of an only son in early 

 manhood, and of an only daughter at an advanced age in 

 1890. 



Through the kindness of Mr. J. B. Wohlmann, late head- 

 master of the Grammar School, I learn that in the parish 

 registers of births, deaths, and marriages in Hertford, and 

 also in Chauncey's " History and Antiquities of Hertford- 

 shire " and in Clutterbuck's "History of Herts," there are 

 considerable numbers of Greenells (the name being variously 

 spelt, as Grinell, Greenhill, etc.), going back continuously to 

 l S79- I possess an old seal with a coat-of-arms which 

 belonged to my grandfather, and was believed to be those 

 of the Greenell family — a cross on a shield with seven balls 

 on the cross, and a leopard's head for a crest. The balls 

 indicate the name, " Grenaille " being French for shot ; and 

 the family were not improbably French refugees after the 

 massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572. 



My mother had several large oil-paintings of the Greenell 

 ancestors which came to her from her sister, Mrs. Wilson, 

 when the Wilsons went to South Australia. Being incon- 

 veniently large for our small houses and our frequent re- 

 movals, they were given to the Miss Roberts above mentioned, 

 who had a large house at Epsom, and on her death they 

 passed with the house to some relatives of her mother, who 

 had no kinship whatever with the Greenells. One of these 

 portraits was that of the great-uncle William Greenell, of 

 Marylebone, who was an architect, and is represented with 

 the design of some public building which, we were told, he 

 had had the honour of himself showing to the king, George 

 the Second or Third. He is shown as a young man, and I 

 was said to resemble him, not only in features, but in a slight 

 peculiarity in one eyebrow, which was indicated on the 

 portrait. I wished to obtain a photograph of this portrait a 

 few years ago, but the present owner refused to allow it to 

 be copied, having, I fancy, some exaggerated idea of its value 

 as a work of art. 



