This family can also lay claim to great antiquity, being certainly resident at Eyton on the Wealdmoors as early as the reigns of Henry I. and II. They were in some way connected with the Pantulfs, Barons of Wem, who were Lords of Eyton at the period of the Domesday Survey, and, in consequence of this connection, not only quarter their arms, but were among the very few Shropshire gentry who were not dispossessed after the Rebellion of the third Norman Earl of Shrewsbury, in the time of Henry I.
Robert de Eyton stands at the head of the pedigree.
See Blakeway, pp. 56, 70, 71; Eyton's Shropshire, viii. p. 26; and Morris MSS.
Arms.—Quarterly, first and fourth, or, a fret azure; second and third, gules two bars ermine.
Present Representative, Thomas Campbell Eyton, Esq.
Plowden of Plowden.
When the ancestors of this family were first seated at Plowden is a matter of doubt, but it was at a very early period. In 1194 Roger de Plowden is said to have been at the siege of Acre with Richard I., and there to have acquired the fleurs-de-lis in the arms. The name occurs upon all the county records from the reign of Henry III. Edmund Plowden the lawyer, in the sixteenth century, was the great luminary of this family.
See Baker's Northamptonshire, i. 470; Blakeway, pp. 132, 222, and Morris MSS.