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The first step taken to counteract their tendency to Hibernicize themselves, was to bestow additional honours on the great families. The baronry of Offally was enlarged into the earldom of Kildare; the lordship of Carrick into the earldom of Ormond; the title of Desmond was conferred on Maurice Fitz-Thomas Fitzgerald, and that of Louth on the Baron de Bermingham.
"Brother, brother, those men are the most valiant and famous chiefs in thine earldom. Go, Tostig, thou art not now in the mood to hear reason. Retire into the city; summon its gates to open to the King's flag. I will hear the men."
The earldom of the East-Angles was held by a born Englishman who was more hateful than any stranger. Ralph of Wader was the one Englishman who had fought at William's side against England. He often passes for a native of Britanny, and he certainly held lands and castles in that country; but he was Breton only by the mother's side.
He dropped a veil on the bashful topic; his tone was the same as when he reverted to the material points; his present income, his position in the great Bank of Shotts and Co., his prospects, the health of the heir to the Cantor earldom.
There was no British heir to the earldom of Stirling, a Scotch peerage; and, as he believed that he was a direct descendant of the last Lord Stirling, the young man went to England, and laid claim to the estate and title. He was successful in proving his direct descent from the earls of Stirling; but the House of Lords, who gave the final decision in the case, would not allow his claim.
He had also been invested with the government of the great Earldom of Moere, where the sons of Harald, jealous of the favor with which he was regarded by their father, burnt him and sixty of his men, in his own house. The vengeance taken by his sons had been signal, and the King had replaced Thorer the Silent, one of their number, in his father's earldom.
As a matter of fact, he probably came to England with Canute and received the earldom of Deira after the death of Eadwulf Cutel, the Earl of Northumbria, when the Northumbrian earldom appears to have been divided. He married Ælflæd, daughter of Ealdred, Earl of Bernicia, the nephew of Eadwulf Cutel.
His earldom was transferred to Edmund, the king's son, already Montfort's successor as Earl of Leicester, and in 1267 also Earl of Lancaster, a new earldom, deriving its name from the youngest of the shires. Reduced to the Staffordshire estate of Chartley, the house of Ferrars fell back into the minor baronage. Kenilworth was still unconquered.
The earldom and the garter were to Lord Lilburne no more tempting inducements than a doll or a skipping-rope; had you offered him an infallible cure for the gout, or an antidote against old age, you might have hired him as your lackey on your own terms. Lord Lilburne's next heir was the son of his only brother, a person entirely dependent on his uncle.
Yet the only child of the unlucky Edmund of Woodstock was no mean heiress, bringing with her the estates of her father's earldom of Kent, besides the inheritance of her mother's family, the Wakes of Liddell and Lincolnshire.
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