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.
DERBYSHIRE.
Knightly.
Gresley of Drakelow, Baronet 1611.
"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.
See Leland's Itinerary in Coll. Topog. et Genealog. iii. 339; Nichols's History of Leicestershire, iii. pt. 2, p. 1009*; the Topographer, i. 432, 455, 474; Lysons, lxiii.; Wotton's Baronetage, i. 121; and Erdeswick's Staffordshire, ed 1844, p. 208.
Arms.—Vaire, ermine and gules. Allusive no doubt to the Ferrers,' under whom Drakelow was held anno 1200, by the service of a bow, quiver, and 12 arrows. The same coat was borne by Sir Geffray de Greseley in the reign of Edward I., and by Sir Peres de Gresle, in the reign of Edward II. (Rolls.) John de Greseley bore simply, Vair, argent and gules. (Roll Ric. II.)