Kynaston of Hardwicke, Baronet 1818.
The Kynastons are lineal descendants of the ancient British Princes of Powys, sprung from Griffith, son of Iorwerth Goch, who took refuge in this county; where, as it is stated in the Testa de Nevill, King Henry II. gave him the manors of Rowton and Ellardine, in the parish of High Ercall, and Sutton and Brocton in the parish of Sutton, to be held in capite by the service of being latimer (i.e. interpreter) between the English and Welsh. He married Matilda, younger sister and coheir of Ralph le Strange, and in her right became possessed of the manor of Kinnerley and other estates in Shropshire. Madoc, the eldest son of Griffith, seated himself at Sutton, from him called to this day "Sutton Madoc;" Griffith Vychan, the younger son, had Kinnerley, a portion of his mother's inheritance, and in that manor he resided at Tre-gynvarth, Anglicè Kynvarth's Town, usually written and spoken as Kynaston; and hence the name of the family. Griffith or Griffin de Kyneveston, son of Griffith Vychan, was witness to a grant of land to the abbey of Haghmond in 1313. His lineal descendant Roger Kynaston fought at Blore Heathe in 1459, and Lord Audley the Lancastrian General is supposed to have fallen by his hand; hence the second quarter in the arms, and for this and other services he received the honour of knighthood. The Kynastons, from the place so called, went to Hordley, and latterly in the seventeenth century removed to Hardwicke.
The Kynastons of Oteley, extinct early in the eighteenth century, were an elder branch; they acquired Oteley by the marriage of an heiress of that ancient house in the reign of Henry VII., and were descended from John, elder brother of Sir Roger Kynaston before mentioned.
See Blakeway, p. 73; and Morris MSS.
Arms.—Quarterly, 1 and 4, Argent, a lion rampant sable; 2 and 3, Ermine, a chevron gules. Sir John de Kynastone in the reign of Edward II. bore, Sable, a lion rampant queve forchée or. (Roll.)
Present Representative, Sir John Roger Kynaston, 3rd Baronet.
Cornewall of Delbury.
This is the only remaining branch of the once powerful family of Cornewall, for so many ages Barons of Burford, (though without a summons to parliament,) descended from Richard, natural son of Richard Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans, and second son of John King of England: (an illegitimacy however which was denied at the Heralds' Visitation of this county in 1623, by Sir Thomas Cornewall, of Burford, who stated that the said Richard was the legitimate son of Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, by Sanchia of Provence, his second wife). The Barony of Burford came into the Cornewall family before he ninth of Edward II. with the coheiress of Mortimer, and continued with the descendants till the death of Francis, Baron of Burford, in 1726. The present family is sprung from a younger line, seated at Berrington in the county of Hereford, in the fifteenth century, and which estate was sold in the eighteenth. Delbury was purchased by and became the seat of Frederick Cornewall, Esq. who died in 1788, and was father of the late Bishop of Worcester.