I find in Normandy a family named De la Bonde that bore Ermine, a cross Gules, and was ennobled in 1698. On this side of the Channel the name frequently appears in the Hundred Rolls, about 1272, chiefly in Norfolk and Lincoln; but the only earlier mention of it I can find is in Yorkshire, where “Bonde of Whasington” witnesses a grant of Hervey Fitz Aker of some land at Ravensworth in the North Riding. In Kent the manor house of Bounds, in the parish of Bidborough, took the name of its ancient owners, who continued there till 1347.—Hasted's Kent. Bernard de Bonde of Stamford, witnesses a deed there 30 Ed. I., and Beckley in Oxfordshire was held by Sir Nicholas Bonde of Edward Prince of Wales, t. Edward II. The existing Dorsetshire family of Bond of Grange has the honour of being included in Mr. Evelyn Shirley’s jealously-guarded Libro d'Oro, “The Noble and Gentle Men of England,” and claims a very high antiquity, but I fear on unsubstantial grounds. “Mr. Bond, of Creech Grange, has a very long pedigree of his family in the handwriting of his ancestor Denis Bond of Sutton, who died in 1658. It deduces their descent from 'Bond, a Norman,’ who came into England with the Conqueror, and married the heiress of Bond of Penryn in Cornwall, from whom were eleven descents of the Bonds of Penryn, ending in an only daughter and heir, married to Sir William Mardolfe, knt. From her uncle Richard Bond sprang eight descents, described as of Yearthe (Earthe, near Saltash) in Cornwall; the last of whom, Robert Bond, is said to have had three sons: 1. Thomas of Yearthe, who left an only daughter married to John Halwell of Devonshire: 2. Robert of Yearthe, ancestor of the Bonds who were living at that place in 1623, when their pedigree was recorded in the Herald’s Visitation of that year: and 3. Robert, ancestor of the Bonds of the Isle of Purbeck, who was living 9 Hen. VI. This pedigree was given to Elias Bond by a person named Sanque, described as one of the heralds, whom he met with at Rouen, in Normandy. Mr. Denis Bond, brother of Elias, says he had himself met this person in Spain, whither he had fled on the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, for he was “a popish fello and one of the gun-pouder treson.” He affirmed the pedigree to be true, but Mr. Bond gave it no credit. It is very erroneous, has no dates, and is unsupported by original evidences.

“A more reliable account of the Bonds of the Isle of Purbeck shows them to have sprung from Hatch Beauchamp, in Somersetshire, where the name is to be met with as early as the commencement of the reign of Edward III.”—Hutchin's Dorset. They purchased Creech Grange in 1686 from the Lawrences, and bear as their motto Point de faux-bond.

“Mr. Denis Bond thought the Bonds of London, whose pedigree is recorded in the Herald’s Visitation of 1633, and whose descendant, Sir Thomas Bond, Comptroller of the Household of Queen Henrietta Maria, was created a Baronet by Charles II., were descended from a younger son of the first Robert Bond of Hatch Beauchamp. It is evident, however, from a calculation of dates, that they could not have been connected with him in the way supposed, though it is highly probable they were a branch of his family. Sir Thomas, the first baronet, was son of Sir William Bond of Highgate, Middlesex, son of Sir George Bond, Lord Mayor of London, and the brother of William Bond of Crosby Palace of Bishopsgate St., the magnificent Gothic hall of which still remains standing. He built Old Bond St. in London, which proved an unfortunate speculation, for Evelyn in his Diary says he built it ‘to his great undoing.’ Some interesting old monuments of these Bonds remain in the church of Great St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate Street, adjoining Crosby Hall.”—Ibid. The baronetcy expired in the last century.