“Disney, alias de Iseney; he dwelleth at Diseney; and of his Name and Line be Gentilmen yn France. Ailesham Priory by Thorney Courtoise was of the Disseney’s Foundation: and there were dyvers of them buried, and likewise at Diseney.”—Leland. This family took its name from Isigny, near Bayeux, and survived in Normandy at the end of the last century. Thomas Henry Godard d’lsigny, of the Bailifry of Cérences, was represented at the great . Assembly of the Nobles of the Côtentin in 1789.

In England it has never died out at all. Lambert d’Isigny, who heads the pedigree, is still represented by lineal descendants in the male line; and his manor of Norton-Disney, in the wapentake of Boothby Graffoe, and parts of Kesteven, co. Lincoln, continued to be their seat till the time of James II. According to this pedigree, as furnished by the College of Arms, twenty-four generations have there succeeded each other in peaceful possession: but it is impossible to doubt that they have been unduly crowded by interpolations during the first two hundred years. Sir William Disney, who lived under Henry III., is made eleventh in descent from Lambert, who came in with the Conqueror— thus nearly doubling the usual number of generations. This Sir William married a great heiress, Joan, daughter of Sir William de Dive by the co-heiress of Amundeville, who, on the death of her brother, Sir John de Dive, shared his estate with her sister Elizabeth. Her tomb, in the north chancel of Norton- Disney Church, is the first of the series of monuments there erected to the family, and bears on two shields the arms of Humfines alias Amundeville, Argent, three lions passant guardant in pale Gules, likewise shewn on the tombs of her son and daughter-in-law. The son, another Sir William, who was four times knight of the shire in the reigns of the first two Edwards, lies under an arch between the altar and the chancel, his effigy, “cumbent in armour," wearing a helmet of chain-mail; and at his head, on a similar altar tomb, rests his wife, partly hidden by a sepulchral cross, with the inscription: Ici gist Joan que fust la femme moun. Gillam Disni, et file moun sire Nicholas de Lancfort. Deu cite merci de sa alme. Amen. This singular monument has been engraved by Gough. “The capricious and somewhat grotesque combination of the sepulchral cross with portions of the effigy, the latter being either in low relief upon the face of the slab, or shown through apertures in various parts of it, seems to have been a local fashion, mostly adopted in Lincolnshire and the adjacent counties. Gough gives among other examples the strangely combined memorial of Dame Joan Disney at Norton-Disney. The lady’s bust and arms, with hands conjoined, are there shown surrounded by escutcheons of arms and accessary decorations; the lower part of the slab is charged with a cross, and through a trefoiled aperture at its base the feet of the deceased lady appear resting on a dog."—Archæological Journal, vol. xxiii., p. 215. None of these escutcheons bear either the paternal coat of the Disneys, Argent on a fess Gules three fleurs de lis Or; or that of Dive, Gules a fess daucettee Or between three escallop shells Ermine; but only the lions of Amundeville—showing the high importance attached to that alliance—and the arms of Langford. The next heir, a third Sir William, Sheriff of Lincoln and knight of the shire in 1340, married a daughter of Lord Grey de Ruthyn: another Disney was among the slain on the bloody Palm Sunday of Towton Field; and a third, Richard, who three times served as Sheriff under Philip and Mary and Elizabeth, added to his estate by marrying Margaret, daughter and co-heir, by a Lovell heiress, of Sir William Hussey, eldest son of John Lord Hussey. His brass, with the effigies of himself, his two wives, four sons, and five daughters, remains in the parish church. His grandson, Sir Henry Disney, knighted at Whitehall in 1603, had again two wives. By the first, Barbara Thornhaugh, he had an only son, through whom the line at Norton-Disney was carried on till 1722. One of his descendants, William Disney, was concerned in the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion, and executed for high treason on Kennington Common in 1685. The last heirs were two brothers: William, who died unmarried; and Richard, Rector of Bloxham, who left only daughters.

Sir Henry’s second wife, Eleanor Grey, was the ancestress of the existing family. She bore him no less than six sons, of whom the eldest survivor, John, was seated at Swinderby in Lincolnshire, and also held Corscomb in Dorsetshire. He was the father of Gervase, who died s. p., and Daniel, who married Catherine, daughter and co-heir of Sir Henry Fynes-Clinton of Kirksted in Lincolnshire, a grandson of the second Earl of Lincoln. He survived all his four sons (the three elder having died in infancy), and was succeeded by a grandson, John, Sheriff of Notts in 1733. The next heir, Lewis, took the name of Ffytche, as the husband of the heiress of Ffytche of Danbury Hall in Essex; but had no son; and the youngest of his three daughters married the son of his second brother, John Disney, Rector of Swinderby. She was the mother of Edgar, who first settled at The Hyde in Essex, where his posterity still remain.

A Norman name: Isigny; a local name