The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Present Representative, Sir Thomas Gresley, 10th Baronet.

Fitzherbert of Norbury.

This ancient Norman house was seated at Norbury, by the grant of the Prior of Tutbury, in 1125, 25 Henry I. The principal male line becoming extinct in 1649, the succession went to a younger branch descended from William, third son of the celebrated Sir Anthony Fitzherbert the judge, who had seated themselves at Swinnerton, in Staffordshire, still the residence of this family.

Younger branch. Fitzherbert of Tissington, Baronet 1783, descended from Nicholas, younger son of John Fitzherbert of Somersall. See Topographer for a curious account of the pedigree and monuments, ii. 225, and Lysons, 217; for Fitzherbert of Tissington, Topographer and Genealogist, i. 362; Gent. Mag. lxvii. p. 645; Topographer, iii. 57; and Brydges's Collins, ix. 156.

Arms.—Argent, a chief vaire or and gules, over all a bend sable. This coat is also complimentary to Ferrers. The Tissington Fitzherberts have assumed a different coat, viz. Gules, three lions rampant or, from a fanciful notion of their descent from Henry Fitzherbert, Lord Chamberlain 5th Stephen, ancestor of the Herberts of Dean. The lions were assumed as early as 1569. See the Visitation of Derbyshire.

Present Representative, Basil Fitzherbert, Esq.

Curzon of Kedleston, Baron Scarsdale 1761, Baronet 1641.

This ancient family was seated at Kedleston as early as the reign of Henry I. It is said to be of Breton origin, and descended from Geraline, a great benefactor to the Abbey of Abingdon, in Berkshire, in which county the Curzons held lands soon after the Conquest.