A Second Series of Vicissitudes of Families
by Sir Bernard Burke (9781459019997)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Jfdl of I'll noble it no further. Let them erase my name from honour's lists, And drag my scutcheon at their horses' heels; I have deserved it all, for I am poor, And poverty hath neither right of birth, Nor rank, relation, claim, nor privilege. Scott. The ancient Hall at Sockburn in the county of Durham? " Tees-seated Sockburn, where by long descent Conyers was Lord," has mouldered to the level of its bounding pastures; a dying chestnut seems the last remnant of its thick defences of green; and the little rural church, where the old Lords knelt in life and slept in death, is a ruin in its lonely graveyard. The chapel-aisle retained, up to a recent period, a few of the Conyers' monuments; and broken panes of coloured glass, with brasses still unworn, forbade the disruption altogether of Conyers-memories from Sockburn; but a feeling of utter desolation now strikes the tourist on visiting the home of the Conyers's. All is gone. Not an acre of land in the county of Durham is held by one of the name; and of the old Hall, not one stone is left on another. A curious legend, which yet lingers about the place, alone connects the deserted spot with a recollection of its early owners. Sir John Conyers, a doughty knight, is recorded to have slain a venomous wyvern, which was the terror of the country round, and to have been requited hy a royal gift of the Manor of Sockburn, to be held by the service of presenting a falchion to each Bishop of Durham on his first entrance into the Palatinate. Truly could the Conyers' say, " By this sword we hold our land." I do not ask the reader to pin his faith on the Norman name of Conyers being the veritable style of the dragon- slaying knight of Saxon times, much less that the falchion of Cceur de Lion's days, still preserved in...

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