Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. STANTON-COMBE AND ITS INHABITANTS. The house and manor of Stanton-Combe had been in the family of the Durants from the time of the seventh Henry. The acme of the family splendor was in the reign of William and Mary, when a marriage with a rich city heiress enabled the then possessor, Richard, to assume a greater style of living. The pictures of all the family, by Sir Godfrey Kneller and Wissing, bore testimony to the liberal expenditure of the house, as well from the value of the paintings themselves, as from the splendor of the dress and jewels both of men and women. Many were the traditions of the honor and glory of those days, which descended like rays of light through the darker times that succeeded. From these splendid days, in which it was said that the very stone balustrades of the garden- terrace were gilded—no sign of good taste certainly—the troubles and embarrassments of the house commenced. The city heiress left five sons and nine daughters to be provided for; three of whom marrying into noble families of smallestate, were a drain upon the parent-wealth; while all the others, living to a good old age, kept up, as annuitants, an inexhaustible claim. At the end of that generation they were but little the better for the two hundred thousand pounds of the fair Kitty Perkins ; nay, they were so much the worse, for they had acquired habits of expensive living. From that time each succeeding generation found itself in narrower and narrower circumstances. The family lived upon the glory that had been. The furniture of the house grew dimmer and dimmer; the family jewels fewer and fewer; woods were felled, and farms sold, till at length nothing remained which was not strictly entailed—the house itself, and the home farm— and, even upon this, the father of E...