John and his
wife were each descended in the third degree from another Thomas
Frewen, Vicar of Northiam, and brother to Accepted Frewen,
Archbishop of York. John's mother had married a Frewen for a
second husband. And the last complication was to be added by the
Bishop of Chichester's brother, Charles Buckner, Vice-Admiral of
the White, who was twice married, first to a paternal cousin of
Squire John, and second to Anne, only sister of the Squire's wife,
and already the widow of another Frewen. The reader must bear Mrs.
Buckner in mind; it was by means of that lady that Fleeming Jenkin
began life as a poor man. Meanwhile, the relationship of any
Frewen to any Jenkin at the end of these evolutions presents a
problem almost insoluble; and we need not wonder if Mrs. John, thus
exercised in her immediate circle, was in her old age 'a great
genealogist of all Sussex families, and much consulted.' The names
Frewen and Jenkin may almost seem to have been interchangeable at
will; and yet Fate proceeds with such particularity that it was
perhaps on the point of name that the family was ruined.
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