In the reign of Edward III. we find the De Wessyngtons still mingling in chivalrous scenes. The name of Sir Stephen de Wessyngton appears on a list of knights (nobles chevaliers) who were to tilt at a tournament at Dunstable in 1334. He bore for his device a golden rose on an azure field.*

He was soon called to exercise his arms on a sterner field. In 1346, Edward and his son, the Black Prince, being absent with the armies in France, King David of Scotland invaded Northumberland with a powerful army. Queen Philippa, who had remained in England as regent, immediately took the field, calling the northern prelates and nobles to join her standard. They all hastened to obey. Among the prelates was Hatfield, the Bishop of Durham. The sacred banner of St. Cuthbert was again displayed, and the chivalry of the palatinate assisted at

tion of the Siege of Carlavarock, gives a striking picture of the palatinate in those days of its pride and splendor :

"There valor bowed before the rood and book,
And kneeling knighthood served a prelate lord,
Yet little deigned he on such train to look,
Or glance of ruth or pity to afford.

"There time has heard the peal rung out at night,
Has seen from every tower the cressets stream,
When the red bale-fire, on yon western height,
Had roused the warder from his fitful dream.

"Has seen old Durham's lion banner float

O'er the proud bulwark, that, with giant pride
And feet deep plunged amidst the circling moat,
The efforts of the roving Scot defied."

Collect. Topog. et Genealog. tom. iv. p. 395.

VOL. I.-3

the famous battle of Nevil's Cross, near Durham, in which the Scottish army was defeated and King David taken prisoner.

Queen Philippa hastened with a victorious train to cross the sea at Dover, and join King Edward in his camp before Calais. The prelate of Durham accompanied her. His military train consisted of three bannerets, forty-eight knights, one hundred and sixty-four esquires, and eighty archers, on horseback.* They all arrived to witness the surrender of Calais (1346), on which occasion Queen Philippa distinguished herself by her noble interference in saving the lives of its patriot citizens.

Such were the warlike and stately scenes in which the De Wessyngtons were called to mingle by their feudal duties as knights of the palatinate. A few years after the last event (1350), William, at that time lord of the manor of Wessyngton, had license to settle it and the village upon himself, his wife, and "his own right heirs." He died in 1367, and his son and heir, William, succeeded to the estate. The latter is mentioned under the name of Sir William de Weschington, as one of the knights who sat in the privy council of the county during the episcopate of John Fordham.† During this time the whole force of the palatinate was roused to pursue a foray of Scots, under Sir William Douglas, who, having

*Collier's Eccles. Hist. book vi. cent. xiv.
Hutchinson, vol. ii.

ravaged the country, were returning laden with spoil. It was a fruit of the feud between the Douglases and the Percys. The marauders were overtaken by Hotspur Percy, and then took place the battle of Otterbourne, in which Percy was taken prisoner and Douglas slain.*

For upwards of two hundred years the De Wessyngtons had now sat in the councils of the palatinate; had mingled with horse and hound in the stately hunts of its prelates, and followed the banner of St. Cuthbert to the field; but Sir William, just mentioned, was the last of the family that rendered this feudal service. He was the last male of the line to which the inheritance of the manor, by the license granted to his father, was confined. It passed away from the De Wessyngtons, after his death, by the marriage of his only daughter and heir, Dionisia, with Sir William Temple of Studley. By the year 1400 it had become the property of the Blaykestons.+

But though the name of De Wessyngton no longer figured on the chivalrous roll of the palatinate, it continued for a time to flourish in the cloisters. In the year 1416, John de Wessyngton was elected prior of the Benedictine convent attached to the cathedral. The monks of this convent had been licensed by Pope Gregory VIL

"Theare the Dowglas lost his life,

And the Percye was led away."

Fordun, quoted by Surtee's Hist. Durham, vol. 1.

+ Hutchinson's Durham, vol. ii. p. 489.

to perform the solemn duties of the cathedral in place of secular clergy, and William the Conqueror had ordained that the priors of Durham should enjoy all the liberties, dignities, and honors of abbots; should hold their lands and churches in their own hands and free disposition, and have the abbot's seat on the left side of the choir-thus taking rank of every one but the bishop.*

In the course of three centuries and upwards, which had since elapsed, these honors and privileges had been subject to repeated dispute and encroachment, and the prior had nearly been elbowed out of the abbot's chair by the archdeacon. John de Wessyngton was not a man to submit tamely to such infringements of his rights. He forthwith set himself up as the champion of his priory, and in a learned tract, "De Juribus et Possessionibus Ecclesiæ Dunelm," established the validity of the long controverted claims, and fixed himself firmly in the abbot's chair. His success in this controversy gained him much renown among his brethren of the cowl, and in 1426 he presided at the general chapter of the order of St. Benedict, held at Northampton.

The stout prior of Durham had other disputes with the bishop and the secular clergy touching his ecclesiastical functions, in which he was equally victorious, and several tracts remain in manuscript in the dean and chapter's

*Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, tom. i. p. 231. London, ed. 1846.

library-weapons hung up in the church armory as memorials of his polemical battles.

Finally, after fighting divers good fights for the honor of his priory, and filling the abbot's chair for thirty years, he died, to use an ancient phrase, "in all the odor of sanctity," in 1446, and was buried like a soldier on his battle-field, at the door of the north aisle of his church, near to the altar of St. Benedict. On his tombstone was an inscription in brass, now unfortunately obliterated, which may have set forth the valiant deeds of this Washington of the cloisters.*

By this time the primitive stock of the De Wessyngtons had separated into divers branches, holding estates in various parts of England; some distinguishing themselves in the learned professions, others receiving knighthood for public services. Their names are to be found honorably recorded in county histories, or engraved on monuments in time-worn churches and cathedrals, those garnering places of English worthies. By degrees the seignorial sign of de disappeared from before the family surname, which also varied from Wessyngton to Wassington, Wasshington, and finally, to Washington.† A parish

* Hutchinson's Durham, vol. ii. passim.

"The de came to be omitted,” says an old treatise, “when Englishmen and English manners began to prevail upon the recovery of lost credit.”—Restitution of Decayed Intelligence in Antiquities. Lond.

1634.

About the time of Henry VI., says another treatise, the de or d was generally dropped from surnames, when the title of armiger, esquier,