A COTSWOLD FAMILY.*
WHO are the " Hickses "? Our author is inclined to connect the word with the tribal name Hwiccas. The etymology may be correct, though we must own that it does not satisfy us. The purpose of a name is to distinguish. A man was designed by his occupation, his place of dwelling, &c. Where all or even many were Hwiccas, why should A or B be so called ? However this may be, the " Hickses " and their congeners and the "Hicks Beaches" make an interesting subject, which has been admirably treated in the volume before us. To do it justice would require space which it is impossible to accord, and a local knowledge which the writer of this notice does not pretend to possess. We soon see that it, is the result of careful and laborious research, and we recognise at once the skilful literary touch which has been able to bring these painfully collected details into an harmonious whole. The name Hicks occurs early and in many localities. For a while it is borne by persons of humble station. Thus in a Poll-tax document of 1380 we find it in nine parishes, but of all the persons bearing it only one pays more than the minimum of a shilling; he is "Philip Hickus, merchant," and he is taxed at 6s. As owners of land the family seem to date from somewhere about 1600. And here we have some facts and figures which are not without a pathetic significance. Not quite two centuries ago the author of a history of Gloucestershire gave a list of some three hundred noble and gentle families living in the county. Of these twenty-eight are left, and "the hold of many of these twenty-eight on the land is visibly weakening,"—we quote Mrs. Hicks Beach's own words. One family, the Cliffords of Frampton-on-Severn, goes back to the Conquest; another, the Berkeleys, dates (as far• as this county is concerned) from Stephen ; the Guises of Elmore are of the time of Henry III., the Kingscotes of Edward II., and the Estcourts of Edward IV. They have longer pedigrees, but as concerns Gloucestershire these are their beginnings. The first Hicks to be connected with the land seems to be Richard Hicks of Cromhall Court (part • A Cotincold Family: Hicks and Hicks Beach. By Mrs. William Hicks Beeek. London o W. Heinemann. [12s. 6d. net.]
of the Berkeley Manor). This line died out in 1783. From Berkeley we pass to Oheapside, or, rather, to Soper's Lane End, now Queen Street, where Robert Hicks, mercer, had his shop in the seventeenth century. Robert Hicks had three sons, Clement, Baptist, and Michael, who were greater men than their father, and be left a widow, Juliana, afterwards married to Antony Penn. These people bring us into history ; but it has been reserved for our own time to see a really distinguished connexion of the family with public affairs. In Lord St. Aldvryn the Hicks Beach family have a head and representative of whom they have every right to feel proud. Our readers will find the volume well worth study.
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