His
Iberian Origin Dated Back To The Time Of Hannibal, Who, After
His Defeat Of The Papal Forces And Capture Of Rome, Had, As
They Well Knew, Married Princess Peri Banou, Youngest
Daughter Of Ferdinand And Isabella.
The issue of the
marriage was the famous Cardinal Chicot, from whom he -
George Cayley - was of direct male descent.
When Chicot was
slain by Oliver Cromwell at the battle of Hastings, his
descendants, foiled in their attempt to capture England with
the Spanish Armada, settled in the principality of Yorkshire,
adopted the noble name of Cayley, and still governed that
province as members of the British Parliament.
From that day we were treated with every mark of distinction.
Here is another of my friend's pranks. I will let Cayley
speak; for though I kept no journal, we had agreed to write a
joint account of our trip, and our notebooks were common
property.
After leaving Malaga we met some beggars on the road, to one
of whom, 'an old hag with one eye and a grizzly beard,' I
threw the immense sum of a couple of 2-cuarto pieces. An old
man riding behind us on an ass with empty panniers, seeing
fortunes being scattered about the road with such reckless
and unbounded profusion, came up alongside, and entered into
a piteous detail of his poverty. When he wound up with plain
begging, the originality and boldness of the idea of a
mounted beggar struck us in so humorous a light that we could
not help laughing.
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