It happened to me to have a singular opportunity of observing this intensely aristocratic character in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, pervading English Society. It was at that time customary, I know not if it is the custom now, for the college tutor at Trinity College to take compassion on the unhappy Freshman who was to dine for the first time in hall, so far as to appoint him to come to his rooms a few minutes before the dinner bell rang, and consign him to the care of another Freshman who had been similarly introduced to hall a day or two before, and who by the arrangement of the college tutor was to introduce into hall another Freshman as he had himself been introduced a few days before. I think, to the best
maticus are not the same of which William de Douglas was in possession. It would appear from comparing the charter granted to Theobaldus Flammaticus that though situated on the water of Douglas, they never made a part of the barony of that name, and therefore cannot be the same with those held by William de Douglas in the succeeding generation. But if William de Douglas did not succeed Theobaldus Flammaticus, there is no more reason for holding these two persons to be father and son than if they had lived in different provinces, and we are still as far from having discovered the first mean man of the Douglas family as Hume of Godscroft was in the sixteenth century.
