OSBORN FAMILY.
(Vol. viii., p. 270.)
Mr. H. T. Griffith asks where may any pedigree of the Osborne family, previous to Edward Osborne, the ancestor of the Dukes of Leeds, be seen. In reply, I am in possession of large collections relating to the Norman Osbornes, from whom I have reasons to believe him to have been descended. Those Osbornes can be proved to have been settled in certain of the midland counties of England from the time of the attainder and downfall of the son of William Fitzosborne, Earl of Hereford and premier peer, down to a comparatively late period. A branch of them was possessed of the manor of Kelmarsh in Northamptonshire; and their pedigree, beginning in 1461, may be seen in Whalley's Northamptonshire: but this is necessarily very imperfect, on account of the author's want of access to documents which have subsequently been opened to the public.
I may here notice that an inexcusable error has been committed and repeated in several of the collections of records published by the Parliamentary Commission, who have, in numerous instances, and without any warrant, interpreted Osb. of the MSS. as "Osbert." Thus they have deprived Fitzosborne, Bishop of Exeter (A.D. 1102), of some of his manors, and within his own diocese, and conferred them on Osbert the Bishop, although there never was a bishop of that name in England. I took the liberty of pointing out this error to one of the chief editors concerned in these works; but as he has taken no notice of my observations, I must infer that he thinks it most prudent to excite no farther inquiry.
The Osborns, now so numerous in London, appear to have come from the Danish stem from which the Norman branch was originally derived. Their number, which has increased even beyond the ordinary ratio of the population, may perhaps be dated from the wife of one of them who (temp. Jac. I.) had twenty-four sons, and was interred in old St. Paul's.
I shall be very happy to afford any assistance in my power to the gentleman who has occasioned these remarks.
Omicron.