Part 20

Durham, being a separate regality, is not included in the Domesday Book, and our earliest record is the Boldon Book, dated some years later, being compiled by order of Bishop Pudsey in 1183. Later there is a survey of the county, made by order of Bishop Hatfield, who ruled from 1345 to 1381. From the time of Bishop Beaumont (1318-33) the succession may be proved by the inquisitions post-mortem taken upon the death of every owner. These documents were formerly kept at Durham, but are now, with many other local records, in London.

With these must be mentioned the Halmote Rolls, commencing in 1349, containing a record of all holders of the Bishop’s lands and other records of the cursitors. The Durham Chancery Proceedings, also now in the Record Office, are full of the most interesting information respecting local families.

The wills of residents in the Bishopric from the sixteenth century onwards are of great value. A few also of the parish registers within the diocese commence towards the end of the same century, but the majority do not date with any regularity until another hundred years had passed.

Limited space forbids any lengthy account of the families individually, and a few passing notices must suffice. Amongst the existing "indigenous" families, as Surtees calls them, the Lumleys must bear the palm, not for length of pedigree, but for the long period they have ranked amongst the greater nobility.

Probably for some generations before, and certainly from, the days of Uchtred, Lord of Lumley, _temp._ King Stephen, the family has held high rank. Marmaduke de Lumley, who was in right of his mother one of the coheirs of the barony of Thweng, made an interesting change in the family arms. His father had borne a scarlet shield with six silver popinjays, whilst his mother’s family arms were a golden shield, thereon a fess gules. Marmaduke dispensed with three of the popinjays, and placed his mother’s fess between the remaining three, two above it and one below. His son Sir Ralph, the builder of the castle at Lumley, was summoned to Parliament as a Baron in the eighth year of Richard II.’s reign. Yorkist in sympathy, he joined in an unfortunate attempt to overthrow the fourth Henry in the year that monarch grasped the throne, and was killed at Cirencester in a skirmish. One of his younger sons, Marmaduke, was successively Bishop of Carlisle and Lincoln, and Lord High Treasurer of England. John de Lumley, Sir Ralph’s second but eldest surviving son, was restored to his father’s estates by King Henry, became a distinguished leader in the French wars, and was slain on the field of Baugé in 1421. The successor, his only son Thomas, was summoned to Parliament in his grandfather’s barony in 1461, the attainder of the latter being reversed upon petition.

Third in descent from the last-named peer, John, the fifth Baron, took

## part in the great victory of Flodden. He lived to see his son and heir,

George Lumley, beheaded for high treason, and attainted, for taking part in the Pilgrimage of Grace.

George Lumley’s son, John Lumley, was recreated a Peer in 1547, his father’s attainder being reversed. This John, Lord Lumley, must have been something of an Oriental in his philosophy. He was strongly imbued with the spirit of ancestor-worship. It was he who brought two stone monuments from Durham Abbey under the belief that they were of his forefathers, and set them up with a long line of effigies representing every generation of his house from a remote period. The rooms at Lumley were also hung with a series of portraits of the same individuals by his direction. About the origin of these the late Mr. Planché advanced an interesting theory, printed in 1866, in the _Journal of the British Archæological Association_.

Lord Lumley appears to have impressed his family importance upon William James, the contemporary Bishop of Durham, whose repetition of the pedigree so astonished that modern Solomon, King James I., that the latter evidently thought the Bishop was taking a rise out of him. "By my saul, I didna ken Adam’s name was Lumley!" said the Sovereign. Doubtless this was a natural exclamation, for it was the King’s first meeting with a pedigree drawn up by an Elizabethan Herald. He would meet others as he travelled farther South!

The estates passed on the death of this peer to a second cousin, Sir Richard Lumley. Created in 1628 a Viscount in the Peerage of Ireland, Sir Richard in later years was known as a gallant Royalist, and one of Prince Rupert’s trusted officers.

His son, another Richard, one of the commanders of the Royal army at Sedgemoor, was advanced in 1690 to the Earldom of Scarborough. Little more remains to be said, beyond that Lumleys have taken part in almost every war since that date (one, Sir William, commanded the cavalry at Albuera; and another, a captain in the navy, was killed on the _Isis_ in 1782), and that Lumley Castle is still the seat of the Earls of Scarborough.

Closely allied to the Lumleys by marriage, the Lambtons have owned the adjoining estate of Lambton from the twelfth century. Their connection with the curious legend of the Lambton Worm has made the name widely known in the North. From the fifteenth century onwards the family were perhaps most remarkable for the brilliant series of marriages the successive owners of the estate made. Matches with Rokeby of Rokeby, Lumley of Ludworth, the Lords Eure, the Tempests of Stella, and the Curwens of Workington, each either bringing additional lands to the house, or else widening and extending the family influence, came to a climax with the marriage of Ralph Lambton, in 1696, with Dorothy Hedworth, heiress to great estates on the north bank of the river. The great-grandson of this marriage was the celebrated Radical Earl of Durham, whose life has been told in recent years by Mr. Stuart Reid.

The Greenwells are the third ancient house in this county who still dwell on the lands from which they take their name. At the time our earliest record, the Boldon Book, was compiled, William the Priest[30] held lands at Greenwell, in the green valley of Wolsingham, and his sons, James and Richard de Greenwell, took their surname from their home. From their generation through long centuries Greenwell succeeded Greenwell, until the death of Henry Greenwell in 1890. The estate then passed to his brother’s daughter, Mrs. Fletcher, who sold Greenwell within the last few years to her kinsman, Sir Walpole Eyre Greenwell, Bart.

Like other families, as the years passed by, younger sons founded branches, some of which flourished and became even more influential than the parent stem.

Anthony Greenwell, a son of Peter Greenwell of Wolsingham, and grandson of Peter Greenwell of Greenwell, living in the reign of Henry VIII., is stated to have settled at Corbridge, in the adjoining county of Northumberland. His son Ralph became allied by marriage to a number of influential families; the administration issued after the death of his father-in-law, Ralph Fenwick of Dilston, in

[Illustration: GENERAL JOHN LAMBTON.]

1623, showing that the latter left five daughters, his coheirs. Of these, Isabel, the eldest, married Ralph Greenwell, Mary married John Swinburne, Agnes was wife to John Orde, Margaret to George Tempest of Winlaton, and Barbara married William Harrison.

Ralph’s grandson Nicholas, so named after his mother’s father Nicholas Leadbitter of Warden, married, in 1683, Frances Whitfield, and their son, Whitfield Greenwell, a captain in the army, was killed at the Battle of Glenshiels in 1719. From his grandson, John Greenwell, of the India House, the present Sir Walpole Greenwell is lineally descended.

A second branch of the family has long been known as the Greenwells of Greenwell Ford, thus curiously taking their name from the old home in Wolsingham parish and giving it to the new (though its very newness has now grown green with age) home near Lanchester.

Thomas Greenwell, probably a younger son of John Greenwell of Greenwell, living _circa_ 1440, took up his abode at Stobilee, in the parish of Satley (the vill of which had been held in chief in the early days of the fourteenth century by Robert de Greenwell), and there his descendants resided until the time of the Commonwealth, when the then head of the family, William Greenwell, was sequestered as a Royalist, his lands being taken from him, and let to Henry Blackett by the Parliamentary Commissioners.

Nicholas Greenwell, a younger brother of the Royalist William, founded the house of Ford, purchasing that estate in 1633. He married at Medomsley, in 1623, Mary Kirkley, probably a near relative of Michael Kirkley of Newcastle, whose daughter married the first Sir William Blackett. This Michael Kirkley mentions in his will, which he made in 1620, amongst other relatives, his cousin, Mr. William Greenwell the elder, of London, merchant, to whom William Camden, the Herald, had confirmed in 1602 "the antient armes of the worshipfull family of Greenwell, of Grenewell Hill, in the County Palatine of Duresme, from which the said William Greenwell is descended." This London branch of the family ended with an heiress, who married Thomas Legh, of Ridge, in Cheshire.

Returning to Nicholas Greenwell of Ford, he died in 1640, and was buried amongst his ancestors at Lanchester. His son, another William, added lands at Kibblesworth to the paternal estate by marriage with an heiress of the Cole family. He died at an advanced age in 1701, when his eldest son, Nicholas, succeeded to Greenwell Ford, whilst Kibblesworth passed to his younger son, Robert. The latter was great-grandfather of the late Major-General Sir Leonard Greenwell, K.C.B., who, in 1820, acted as godfather to the present venerable head of the family, the author of Greenwell’s Glory, one of, if not, the best trout flies known.

Other branches of the family have flourished for awhile and then disappeared. In 1697 William Greenwell of Whitworth acquired a moiety, including the mansion-house of Great Chilton, where his descendants lived for some three generations. One of his daughters married Cuthbert Smith, whose brother Ralph became his heir. This hunting squire bequeathed his property, for no other reason but that they had often ridden together

"From the drag to the chase, from the chase to the view, From the view to the death in the morning,"

to Robert Surtees of Milkwellburn.

At a much earlier date another William Greenwell owned a fair estate at Neasham, and dying in 1619 left two daughters, Margaret aged three and Eleanor two years, as his heirs. His widow married Marmaduke Wyville, and the daughters respectively became the wives of John Taylor of Appleton, and Ralph Hedworth of Pokerley.

One other branch, still surviving, must not be passed over. The estate of Broomshields near to Satley has belonged to Greenwells from as far back as 1488, when one of the many Peters lived there. The representation of the Maddisons of Hole House in the Derwent Valley, a family celebrated in local history and ballad, passed into this family by marriage in 1774. A later owner of Broomshields, John Greenwell, married Elizabeth, daughter of Alan Greenwell of Ford, and thus re-united the two families.

Many years have passed since Robert Surtees wrote: "_Sic transit._ We know not what are become of the descendants of Bulmer, whose ancestors held Brancepeth and Middleham Castles. The family of Conyers, which has had Parliamentary lords, and once consisted of nine or ten flourishing branches (excepting some remains in the South), is reduced to a single Baronet’s title without a fortune, and the probable descendants of Surtees of Dinsdale are ignorant of their own origin, whilst the chief male line is either extinct or steeped in poverty and oblivion."

The great house of Surtees derives, as its name implies, its origin from a family resident to a remote period on the banks of the River Tees. William, the son of Siward, was living there in the reign of Henry II., and his son Ralph was the first to style himself Sur Tees, the family residence being then, as for many long years afterwards, at Dinsdale, the adjoining seat to Sockburn where the Conyers family dwelt.

Of the dissolution of this head house of the race, Mr. Surtees added: "I discovered by a remarkable deed at Durham (unknown to Hutchinson) how the estates went to Brandling in prejudice of Marmaduke, heir male of the half-blood; and that Marmaduke’s grandson Thomas sold most of what remained in the male line; but I cannot find further as to this Thomas except that his younger brother Richard married and had two sons, Robert and Richard, who are the last I can trace of this branch, the undoubted direct heirs."

The existing branches of this old family now resident at Redworth Hall, Mainsforth, and Hamsterley, derive their descent from a William Surtees who, in the year 1440, acquired lands in Whickham under the Halmote Court, his sureties being Robert Boutflower and Thomas Gibson.

His descendants for some generations resided within the parishes of Whickham in this county, and Ovingham in Northumberland.

Edward Surtees strengthened the family by marrying in 1617 Margaret Coulson, whose mother was sister and heir of Robert Surtees, Alderman and twice Mayor of Durham.

The eldest son of this marriage was ancestor of the famous beauty, Bessy Surtees, who ran away with and married John Scott, afterwards Lord Eldon and Chancellor of Great Britain.

The second son, Robert Surtees of Ryton, added to his inheritance by marrying an heiress of the Hauxley family. He purchased Mainsforth and founded the two families now owning that seat and Redworth, and amongst his descendants was Robert Surtees the historian, to whom his native county owes an everlasting debt.

The Surtees of Hamsterley Hall trace their descent from a Cuthbert Surtees of Ebchester who died in 1622, and whose relationship to the Ovingham family is not at present clear. His son Anthony, however, held the Hollins in Ovingham parish in 1629, and that property in 1586 was in the possession of Rowland Surtees, who died the following year, and who was brother of William Surtees, ancestor of the families already mentioned.

Hamsterley descended to Robert Smith Surtees, the author of some well-known sporting novels.

The Edens are almost certainly an indigenous family, for there can be but little doubt that they derive their name from the village of Eden, now called Castle Eden. The family for a number of generations resided at Preston-on-Tees,

[Illustration: HOPPYLAND PARK.]

where lands were held by Robert de Eden in 1413. A succession of Thomases and Williams bring the pedigree into the sixteenth century, when John Eden married an heiress of the Lambtons. After the heads of the house successively increased the family patrimony by marrying heiresses of the Hutton, Welbury, and Bee families, John Eden’s great-great-grandson, Robert by name, followed his ancestor’s example by marrying another Lambton heiress. He was Member for the county and was created a Baronet in 1672. Sir Robert Eden, the third Baronet, had a large and distinguished family. His second son Robert was Governor of Maryland, and created a Baronet in 1776. He was ancestor of the present Sir William Eden, who succeeded also to the inheritance of the first-named Sir Robert’s eldest son, and is thus doubly a Baronet. The Governor’s next brother, Sir Robert’s third son, was the distinguished statesman, William Lord Auckland, and the fifth son, Sir Morton Eden, an eminent diplomatist, was created Baron Henley, and was ancestor of the present peer. One of the sisters of this talented trio married John Moore, Archbishop of Canterbury, and another married the Rev. Richard Richardson, Chancellor of St. Paul’s.

Several old families have for many generations dwelt in the Valley of the Derwent, and were all more or less intermarried with each other.

Thomas Hunter, about the end of the fourteenth century, married Margaret Layton, heiress, through her mother, of the family of Alanshields of Alanshields. A century later quite a small clan of the Hunters were resident up and down the valley, but principally at Medomsley. Here in 1675 was born Dr. Christopher Hunter, the celebrated antiquary; and here nearly a century later, in 1757, General Sir Martin Hunter, G.C.M.G., first saw the light.

The Stevensons were another Derwentside family, whose name is best known through John Hall, the _Eugenius_ of Sterne, having taken it when he married the heiress of Ambrose Stevenson of Byerside.

The Shaftos have in various branches been closely connected with the county for many centuries. The late Rev. John Hodgson, in an early volume of the _Archæologia Æliana_, throws doubt upon the traditional descent of the Shaftos in the male line from the Folliots. He overlooked, however, several important facts that at least render the assertion possible. The Fenwick of which the Folliots were Lords is not the Fenwick in Northumberland as he assumed, but the place of that name in Yorkshire which passed by the marriage of Margaret Folliot to her husband, Sir Hugh Hastings, and long continued in his family.

Cuthbert, son of John Folliot of Fenwick, is said to have acquired lands at Shafto in Northumberland by marrying one of the heirs of Roger Welwick of that place, and his descendants took the local name; another daughter of Roger is stated in the Visitation of Rutland, 1618, to have married a Bryan Harbottle. A comparison of the arms of the respective families shows that the Shafto coat is merely the Folliot arms differenced. Jordan Folliot in 1295 bore _gules a bend argent_, and Robert de Shaftowe, a contemporary, bore _gules on a bend argent, three mullets azure_.

The Shaftos of Tanfield Leigh in this county recorded their pedigree at the Visitation of 1615. Le Neve continued the family for several generations. James Shafto, aged eight, in 1615 married a sister of Sir John Jackson of Harraton, and his son was living in 1707, and then described as very poor. His son, again, a third James, married a daughter of Sir Thomas Sandford, and had three sons, after whom the descent is not clear.

The family now resident at Whitworth Park are an early offshoot of the Shaftos of Bavington in Northumberland. They have several times intermarried with the Edens, and, like that family, are very rich in quarterings. Their escutcheon includes the arms of the Cavendishes, Dukes of Newcastle; the Lords Ogle, and many other great houses. Within the last century Beamish Park, near Chester-le-Street, has become the seat of another branch of the same family.

The Salvins of Croxdale are another of our old historic families who have held the same acres for generations. They have lived at their present home from the early days of the fifteenth century. In the time of King Charles they were gallant Loyalists, and two of them were killed in the King’s service.

The Whartons have also resided near to Durham for a good many centuries. They descend from the Whartons of Wharton in Westmorland, and their armorial insignia is interesting both in its origin and as illustrating the close alliance often existing between families bearing similar arms. Amongst the Normans who settled in this country after the Conquest was a family named Flamanville, often abbreviated into Flamville, who took their name from their lordship of that name in the province of La Manche in Normandy, and gave it as a suffix to their new Leicester estate of Aston. Their coat of arms was simply _la manche_, the sleeve, and so the name originally applied to the curious geographical shape of a peninsula came to be a familiar term in English heraldry. They intermarried with the Conyers and the Hastings, and both these families adopted the _manche_ as their emblem. An heiress of the latter family married a Wharton, and to this day a silver _manche_ or _maunch_ on a black field is the Wharton arms.

Dr. Wharton of Old Park, a lineal ancestor of the Dryburn family, is celebrated as one of the courageous physicians who continued to visit the sick during the Great Plague of London. One of his descendants, Dr. Thomas Wharton, was the friend of the poet Thomas Gray, who visited him at Old Park.

The name of Burdon is an old one in the county, and probably derived from one or other of the local villages of that name. There were Burdons at Helmdon centuries ago, and for a number of generations Burdens have owned Castle Eden. The curious articles on the family arms, described by some writers as organ-pipes, are said to be in reality palmers’ staffs, and are so used by the present family.

One branch of the Ords, who are a Northumbrian, or more correctly a North Durham, family, must not be passed over. In the reign of James I. John Ord acquired property at Fishburn, and founded the house who have for so long dwelt at Sands Hall, beside Sedgefield.

Another family of Northumbrian extraction are the Blenkinsopps of Hoppyland, who are, however, in the male line descended from the Leatons or Leightons of Benfieldside. Hoppyland was purchased from the Blacketts in 1768 by William Leaton of Gibside, agent to the Bowes family.

The Blacketts, who now reside at Wylam in Northumberland, held Hoppyland for several generations. Their ancestor, Edward Blackett, of Shildon, married for his second wife a daughter of the famous Lilburne family of Thickley-Puncharden, and a near relative of "Freeborn John." The Baronet family, who now own the old Conyers estate of Sockburn, are also descended from this Edward, and are rather curiously derived from the latter family. The first baronet’s wife was a daughter of Michael Kirkley of Newcastle, whose wife’s grandmother, Marion Anderson, was a lineal descendant of William Conyers of Wynyard.[31]

Ravensworth Castle, near Gateshead, has been the home of the Liddell family since 1607. The third owner of the name was created a Baronet by King Charles I. in 1642, and was a strong Royalist during the troubled years of that King’s reign. Since then the family has twice held peerages. Sir Henry Liddell was created Baron Ravensworth in 1747, but as he had no children the title became extinct at his death in 1784. His great-nephew, Sir Thomas Henry Liddell, took the same title on his elevation to the peerage in 1821.

Two members of the Ravensworth family have left names well known in the literary world. The second Baron, son and namesake of the first, was the author of a translation into English lyric verse of the _Odes of Horace_, and, in conjunction with Mr. Richards, he published in blank verse a translation of the last six books of Virgil’s _Æneid_. He was created Earl of Ravensworth, a title that died with his son, when the Barony passed to a cousin. The Very Rev. Henry George Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and some time Vice-Chancellor of that University, was one of the compilers of the well-known Greek lexicon.

The Bowes family was once as widely scattered over Durham as the Conyers. Streatlam Castle and Gibside, Bradley Hall, Biddick, and Thornton Hall, were all residences of the Boweses at one time. One branch only in the male line survives, and is now resident at Croft. Streatlam and Gibside, however, still belong to descendants in the female line--the Earls of Strathmore--who have added the name of their Durham ancestors to the paternal surname of Lyon.

One of the most celebrated members of this family was _Old_ Sir William Bowes, whose devotion to the young wife he lost, when he was about twenty-eight years old, has caused him to be celebrated amongst true lovers. He lived to a great age, and never remarried.

A descendant of his, Sir George Bowes, is celebrated in local rhyme as--

"Cowardy! cowardy! Barney Castle,"