ARMS.--_Argent, a fess sable, in chief three mullets gules_.
Present Representative, Samuel Irton, Esq. late M.P. for the Western Division of Cumberland.
BRISCOE OF CROFTON, IN THE PARISH OF THURSBY, BARONET 1782.
[Illustration] Originally of Briscoe near Carlisle, where the family were seated three generations before the reign of Edward I. Crofton, which came by an heiress of that name, has been since the year 1390 the residence of the Briscoe family.
ARMS.--_Argent, three greyhounds currant sable_.
In Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, i. 158, there is a pedigree of a younger branch of this family, who were seated at Aldenham, in that county, previous to 1736.
Present Representative, Sir Robert Briscoe, 3rd Baronet.
DYKES OF DOVENBY, IN THE PARISH OF BRIDEKIRK.
[Illustration] The name, originally "Del Dykes," is derived from the two lines of Roman wall in "Burgh," from whence the family at a remote period originated; Ramerus de Dikes, who lived before the reign of Henry II., is the first supposed ancestor. The pedigree is regularly traced three generations before the 50th of Edward III. to the present time. In the Wars of the Roses the Dykes's, like most other families in the Northern counties, were Lancastrian; and in the Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, devoted Royalists, and sufferers for their allegiance to the Crown. Dovenby, formerly the seat of the Lamplughs, came by marriage in the present century. The Manor of Warthole or Wardhill, purchased in the reign of Henry VI., and still in the family, was the former residence. Waverton, acquired in the 10th of Edward II., exchanged in 1619, and Distington, acquired in the 7th of Richard II., and afterwards alienated, were more ancient possessions.
See Lysons, lxxii. 36; Hutchinson's Cumberland, ii. 98 and note; Burn's Cumberland, ii. 49, and i. 157. I am obliged to the present Representative for additions to this account.
ARMS.--_Or, three cinquefoils sable_. Monsr. Willm. de Dyks bore, _Argent, a fess vaire or and gules, between three water bougets sable_, as appears by the Roll of the reign of Richard II.
Present Representative, Frecheville-Lawson Ballantine-Dykes, Esq.
[Illustration] "In point of _stationary_ antiquity hardly any families in the kingdom can compare with the Gresleys," wrote the Topographer in 1789. In this county certainly none can claim precedence to the house of Drakelow; descended from Nigel, mentioned in Domesday, called de Stafford, and said to have been a younger son of Roger de Toni, standard-bearer in Normandy, it was very soon after the Conquest established in Derbyshire, first at Gresley, and immediately afterwards at Drakelow, in the same parish. The present is a younger branch, seated at Nether Seale, in Leicestershire, at the beginning of the eighteenth century.