As the name was spelt in Normandy; one of the noblest families in the North of England. “Roger Conyers was by William the Conqueror made Constable of Durham Castle and Keeper of all the arms of ye souldiers within the Castle, wh was after past to him ye saide Roger by deede to him and his heires mailes for ever, under the great seale of William de Santo Carilepho, Bishop of Durham.” - (Bowes MSS.) According to the MS. a second Roger succeeded to his father, and to him followed a third to whom “Henricus II. Rex. Angliæ dedit vel confirmavit Constabulatum de Dunelme.” “I know,” says Surtees, “of no actual proof to establish this transmission; but there is sufficient evidence from charters in the Treasury to prove that the Norman family of Conyers, Lords of Bishopton (and possibly from the same early date owners of Sockburn), held the rank of nobles or Barons of the Bishopric at least from the reign of Henry I. Bishop Ralph Flambard gave Rungetun in Yorkshire to Roger Conyers before 1126. His son was that Roger Conyers whose important services to Bishop William de St. Barbara are on record in Simeon. The story runs thus: Conyers afforded the Bishop a safe retreat in his strength or Peel-house of Bishopton; and he afterwards had the address to bring the Scotch intruder Comyn a humble, kneeling penitent before the Episcopal throne. To bring about this most wished conclusion implies as much courage, and certainly more address, than if the Constable had finished the contest in the usual manner with the bloody hand. The Constable’s staff, and the Wardenship of Durham Castle, which he had recovered from Comyn, seems a most appropriate reward; and if the green acres of Sockburn were added to the gift, he was still not overpaid.”

His descendants continued Lords of Sockburn for more than five hundred years, holding it of the Prince-Bishop by a curious tenure, said to date from the time of Hugh Pudsey, who first purchased the Earldom of Sadberge from Cœur de Lion. “At the first entrance of the Bishop into his Diocese, the Lord of Sockburn, or his Steward, meets him in the middle of the river Tees, at Neasham ford, or on Croft Bridge, and presents a faulchion to him, with these words: 'My Lord Bishop, I here present you with the faulchion, wherewith the champion Conyers slew the worm, dragon, or fiery flying serpent, which destroyed man, woman, and child: in memory of which, the King then reigning gave him the manor of Sockburn, to hold by this tenure, that upon the first entrance of every Bishop into the country, this faulchion should he presented.’ The Bishop takes the faulchion in his hand, and immediately returns it courteously to the person who presents it, wishing the Lord of Sockburn health, and a long enjoy­ment of the manor.” This ceremony used to be performed with great state and solemnity. The High Sheriff, attended by the Militia-horse and all the gentlemen of the county on horseback, escorted the Lord of Sockburn to the trysting-place on the banks of the Tees, where they awaited the coming of the new Palatine. A blast of trumpets from the other side announced that the Bishop and his train had come in sight; and at this appointed signal the whole assembled company rode into the river, and formed a guard of honour to receive him in the middle of the ford, hailing him Count Palatine and Earl of Sadberge. Bishop Cosin, in 1661, was met by an array of one thousand horsemen, and writes: “At my first entrance through the river of Tease there was scarce any water to be seene for the multitude of horse and man that filled it, when the sworde that killed the dragone was delivered to me with all the formality of trumpets, and gunshots, and acclamations, that might be made.” This ancient service was performed for the last time in 1826 on Croft Bridge, at the coming of Bishop Van Mildert, the last Prince-Palatine of Durham; but no longer by a Conyers, for Sockburn had long before passed into other hands, and the Palatinate Act has now, I am sorry to say, provided for its extinction. The old falchion, It is a huge broad blade, nearly 2 ft. 6 in. long, fixed in a handle partly covered with ash. On the pommel are two shields: the first bears the three lions of England, first borne by King John, proving that the falchion could not have been made before his time; the second a black eagle on a field Or, the arms of Morcar Earl of Northumberland. however - the title deed of the estate - is still preserved by the present Lord of the Manor, Sir Edward Blackett of Matfen.

The legend on which this service was founded is thus recounted in an old pedi­gree: “Sr John Conyers, Knt. slew yt monstrous and poysonous vermine or wyvern, aske, or worme, yt overthrew and devoured manie people in fight, for that ye scent of yt poison was so strong that no person might abyde it. And by y* providence of Almighty God this John Conyers, kt. overthrew ye saide monster, and slew it. But before he made this enterprise, having but one sonne, he went to the Church of Sockburne in compleate armour, and offered up yt his onelie sonne to ye Holy Ghost. Yt place where this greate serpent laye was called Graystane; and this John lieth buried in Sockburne Church in compleat armour before the Conquest.” The Greystane still lies in a field near the churchyard; and the effigy of the slayer of the Worm keeps its place in the ruined chapel. It represents a knight, cross-legged, in the chain-mail of the thirteenth century, unsheathing his sword against a dragon coiled by his side, its teeth fastened in his shield. “I will not doubt,” says Surtees, “that some gallant exploit is veiled under this chivalrous tale.” There are many similar legends in the North of England. The local name of Worm is derived from the Norse Ormr, a serpent or dragon. “Wormshead, Great Orme’s Head, Ormesleigh, Ormeskirk, Wormesgill, Wormelow, Wormeslea, and other names of a similar character scattered over the land, show that our entire country has been pervaded by a belief in such terrible creatures.” - Henderson. The various methods by which the county historians labour to explain them away are, to my thinking, extremely absurd. They are fancied to denote circular forts, Danish rovers, Scottish freebooters, or even unpopular landed proprietors - the Dragon of Wantley, for one, is affiliated to the house of Wortley. Why should we not believe, with Sir Walter Scott, that in bygone days, before our country was drained and cleared of wood, large serpents may have infested the forests and morasses? “The dragons of early tradition,” writes Lord Lindsay, in his Sketches of Christian Art, “whether aquatic or terrestrial, are not perhaps wholly to be regarded as fabulous. In the case of the former, the race may be supposed to have been perpetuated till the marshes or inland seas left by the Deluge were dried up. Hence probably the legends of the Lernæn hydra, &c. As respects their terrestrial brethren (among whom the serpent which checked the army of Regulus for three days near the River Bagradus in Numidia, will be remembered), their existence, testified as it is by the universal credence of antiquity, is not absolutely incredible. Lines of descent are constantly becoming extinct in animal genealogy.” Mr. Henderson adds that “the earliest traditions of almost every nation tell of monsters of sea and land - foes to man" Another falchion, that had slain the Pollard Worm, was presented to the Bishop at his first coming to his castle of Auckland: and the ugly eft that grew to be the Lambton Worm, and the curse of the country side, was fished out of the Wear by an ancestor of Lord Durham’s.

But to return to our pedigree. In 1195, Roger de Conyers, the heir of the house (a grandson of the faithful Conyers who sheltered the fugitive Bishop in his peel-house) sold Sockburn to a younger brother of his father’s, and established himself at Hoton (Hutton) Conyers in Yorkshire. Both there, and in their native County Palatine, the family spread and flourished in many different branches, of which one was to be found in Northumberland. They were allied by marriage to all the great historical names of the North - Nevill, Percy, Scrope, St. Quintin, Beauchamp, Fauconberg, Fitzhugh, Bigod, Lumley, Bulmer, Lisle, Tyas, Newburgh, Markenfield, Savile, Dawney, &c., &c., and in the time of Edward III., Sir John Conyers of Sockburn had to wife one of the co-heiresses of the Barony of Aton - Elizabeth, youngest daughter of Gilbert, second and last Lord of Aton, who represented the great Northumbrian house of De Vesci. John de Coigners, in 1313, received a pardon as an adherent of the Earl of Lancaster: and two of the name, Robert de Coigners of Norton Coigners, a Commissioner of Array in the North Riding, and Geoffrey de Coigners, from Northumberland, were summoned to attend the great Council at Westminster in 1324 (Palgrave’s Parl. Writs). In 1507, Sir William Conyers of Hornby, Constable of the castles of Richmond and Middleham, who had served under Lord Surrey at Flodden, was created Baron Conyers by Henry VII. He rebuilt the old castle, overlooking the Vale of Mowbray, that had descended to him from the St. Quintins (“before but a meane thing,” according to Leland), and married Lady Anne Nevill, daughter of Ralph, third Earl of Westmorland, by whom he had a son and successor. But this second Lord Conyers left only three co-heiresses, and of these only one - Elizabeth Darcy - had issue. Her son, Conyers Darcy, was the first Lord Darcy of the last creation (see Arcy), and ancestor of the Earls of Holderness, extinct 1778. The barony of Conyers then devolved upon the last Earl’s daughter, Amelia Marchioness of Carmarthen, and after her death on her son George sixth Duke of Leeds, by whose descendant it is now borne. Another of the house of Hornby, who acquired Horden through a Claxton co-heiress in the fifteenth century, was the ancestor of Sir John Conyers of Horden, on whom Charles I. conferred a baronetcy in 1628, that continued for nearly two centuries.

Yet, of all this wide-spreading and powerful family, “the stately cedar that overshadowed both Durham and Yorkshire,” not a single scion now survives. Not one male heir is left to represent them, even in the county that was the cradle of their race. Not one stone is now left upon another of the old manor house at Sockburn, where Leland was the guest of Master Conyers, and admired his “green inheritance, the lovely lawn, and the circling Tees.” “Sokburne, where as the oldest House is of the Coniers, with the domains about ytt, of a Mile cumpace of exceeding pleasaunte Grounde, is almost made an isle, as Tese Ryver wyndeth about ytt.

“A little beneth the Maner-place is a grete Were for Fisch. The house and lande of Sokburne hath bene of auncient tyme the verie Inheritaunce of the Coniers.” Even “the little church, standing lowly on its level green,” that had “

survived the halls of its ancient patrons,” is now dismantled, and the monuments and brasses of the Conyers, which filled a chapel on its north side, have - with one solitary exception - been dispersed. The glory has indeed departed from their house.

Surtees mournfully enumerates all the defunct families that had sprung from the parent stock: viz. “Conyers of Hornby Castle, whose peerage is vested by heirs-general in the Duke of Leeds: Conyers of Bowlby, Danby-Wiske, Hutton- Wiske, Thormondby, Pinchinthorpe, Marske, and High Dinsdale, in Yorkshire: Wynyard, Layton, Horden, Cotham-Conyers in co. Durham; and Hoppen, in Northumberland. One family, derived, I believe, from the Bowlby line, still hold the rank of wealthy gentry of Essex. All the others are now fallen, and not a foot of land is held by Conyers either in Yorkshire or Durham.” Even this latter family, descended from Tristram Conyers, Lord of the manors of Scarborough and Cleyton in Skipsey, Yorkshire, and Quapload in Lincolnshire, who first settled in Essex, and died in 1619, is now extinct. They had acquired Copped Hall from the Websters at the beginning of the last century, and ended not many years ago in two co-heiresses. Both were married; but one only, Mrs. Eaton, left children. There appears also to have been a branch in Lancashire, where Yealand-Conyers and Leighton-Conyers still keep the name, and Matthew de Conyers is mentioned in the Testa de Nevill. This expired about the time of Edward I., when Isolda, the heiress, became the wife of Henry de Croft.

One by one - some later, and some earlier - each of the remaining branches of this famous house had died out. The fair domain of Sockburn went, with the heiress of William Conyers, to Francis Talbot, eleventh Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1635, and passed through their daughter to the Stonors. Coatham-Conyers, first brought by Scolastica de Cotam in the time of Edward I., was forfeited by Roger Conyers, who joined the Rising of the Northern Earls in 1569. Wynyard had been transferred to the Claxtons in the previous century. The line of Layton ended in 1748. Hutton passed to the Mallorys, and Danby to the Scropes, who now hold it. Their possessions dwindled and disappeared year by year. Manor after manor was lost to its ancient lords: estate after estate alienated or carried away by heiresses, till at length they were bereft of all, and in 1810 Surtees found Sir Thomas Conyers, the last of his race, in the workhouse of Chester-le-Street! No other earthly refuge was left to him save the pauper’s home, and the pauper’s task of breaking stones upon the road. But he was saved at least from the pauper’s grave. A subscription, proposed by Surtees, and headed by Bishop Barrington, was set on foot to rescue him from his unhappy position; and enough money was collected to remove him to a more fitting abode. The old man only lived, however, a few months afterwards; and with him expired the proud name that had shone in the county annals for the better part of eight hundred years!