2 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, i 



their original home in Cheshire. This home is represented 

 to-day by a farm in the Wirral, about eight, miles from 

 Chester, called Huxley Hall. From this centre Huxleys 

 spread to the neighbouring villages, such as Overton and 

 Eccleston, Clotton and Duddon, Tattenhall and Wettenhall ; 

 others to Chester and Brindley near Nantwich. The south- 

 ward movement carries some to the Welsh border, others 

 into Shropshire. The Wettenhall family established them- 

 selves in the fourth generation at Rushall, and held property 

 in Handsworth and Walsall; the Brindley family sent a, 

 branch to Macclesfield, whose representative, Samuel, must 

 have been on the town council when the Young Pretender 

 rode through on his way to Derby, for he was mayor in 

 1746; while at the end of the sixteenth century, George, 

 the disinherited heir of Brindley, became a merchant in 

 London, and purchased Wyre Hall at Edmonton, where his 

 descendants lived for four generations, his grandson being 

 knighted by Charles II in 1663. 



But my father had no particular interest in tracing his 

 early ancestry. " My own genealogical inquiries," he said, 

 " have taken me so far back that I confess the later stages 

 do not interest me." Towards the end of his life, however, 

 my mother persuaded him to see what could be found out 

 about Huxley Hall and the origin of the name. This proved 

 to be from the manor of Huxley or Hodesleia, whereof one 

 Swanus de Hockenhull was enfeoffed by the abbot and 

 convent of St. Werburgh in the time of Richard I. Of the 

 grandsons of this Swanus, the eldest kept the manor and 

 name of Hockenhull (which is still extant in the Midlands) ; 

 the younger ones took their name from the other fief. 



But the historian of Cheshire records the fact that owing 

 to the respectability of the name, it was unlawfully assumed 

 by divers " losels and lewd fellows of the baser sort," and 

 my father, with a fine show of earnestness, used to declare 

 that he was certain the legitimate owners of the name were 

 far too sober and respectable to have produced such a 

 reprobate as himself, and one of these " losels " must be his 

 progenitor. 



Thomas Henry Huxley was born at Ealing on May 4, 



