Note 228 — 589.

The letter referred to in the Gentleman's Magazine is signed "N. S." It gives the Gibbon pedigree from 1596 down to the historian. It no doubt at first attracted Gibbon's attention from the circumstance of its immediately preceding a communication entitled "Strictures on Some Passages in Mr. Gibbon's History." The article in the Gentleman's Magazine was by Sir Egerton Brydges, whose grandmother was a Gibbon, the heiress of Edward Gibbon of West Cliff, and first cousin to the South Sea director who was the historian's grandfather. Gibbon's letter on the subject to Sir Egerton Brydges is quoted by the latter in his Autobiography (vol. i. pp. 225-227).