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

Younger branches. Curzon Earl Howe 1821; Curzon of Parham, Sussex.

Extinct branches. Curzon of Croxall and Water-Perry, co. Oxford, and of Letheringset, Norfolk.

See Lysons, lii.; Brydges's Collins, vii. 294; Wotton's Baronetage, ii. 243.

Arms.—Argent, a bend sable, charged with three popinjays or, collared gules, borne by Monsr. Roger Curson in the reign of Richard II. Sir John Cursoun bore, Argent, a bend gules bezantée, in that of Edward II. (Rolls.) According to Burton's Collections quoted by Wotton, the more ancient coat was, Vair, or and gules, a border sable charged with popinjays argent: this was in compliment to William Earl Ferrers and Derby, who had granted to Stephen Curson the manor of Fauld, co. Stafford.

Present Representative, the Rev. Alfred Nathaniel Holden Curzon, 4th Baron Scarsdale.

Vernon of Sudbury, Baron Vernon 1762.

The Vernons were originally of Cheshire, and Barons of Shipbrooke, but became connected with Derbyshire by the heiress of Avenell's marriage with Richard Vernon in the 12th century; their son died s.p.m. leaving a daughter and heiress married to Gilbert le Francis, whose son Richard took the name of Vernon, seated himself at Haddon Hall in this county, and was the ancestor of the different branches of the House of Vernon. The Sudbury Vernons settled there in the reign of Henry VIII., and, by the extinction of the other lines, became in the end the chief of the family. Few houses have been more connected together by intermarriage than the Vernons.

Younger branches. The Vernon-Harcourts, now of Nuneham Courteney, co. Oxon; the Vernons of Hilton, Staffordshire; and the Vernon-Wentworths, of Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire.

See Lysons, liii.; Brydges's Collins, vii. 396; Topographer, ii. 217, for inscriptions to the Vernons at Sudbury, which came from the heiress of Montgomery: for Vernon of Houndhill, in the parish of Henbury, and of Harleston in Clifton Camville, see Shaw's Staffordshire, i. 87, 399, and the Topographer, ii. 11: and for Vernon of Tonge, Topographer, iii. 109, and Eyton's Antiquities of Shropshire, vol. ii. p. 191.