This is the head of the wide-spread family of Buller, of which there are several branches in the Western counties. The first recorded ancestor appears to be Ralph Buller, who in the fourteenth century was seated at Woode, in the hundred of South Petherton, and county of Somerset, by an heiress of Beauchamp. They became possessed of Lillesdon, in the same county, and afterwards, by an heiress of Trethurffe, we find them at Tregarrick, in Cornwall, but were not till the eighteenth century of Downes, which came from the coheiress of Gould.
Younger branches. Buller of Morval and of Lanreath, both in the county of Cornwall. Buller of Lupton, in this county, Baronet 1790, Baron Churston 1858.
See Lysons, cxxxvi.; Carew's Cornwall, ed. 1st, p. 133 b; and Gilbert's Survey of Cornwall, ii. 38.
Arms.—Sable, on a plain cross argent, quarter pierced, four eagles of the field.
Present Representative, James Wentworth Buller, Esq.
Huyshe of Sand.
Originally of Doniford, in Somersetshire, where John de Hywish is said to have been seated in the early part of the thirteenth century. Sand, in the parish of Sidbury, came by purchase to an ancestor of the family in the reign of Elizabeth; and, although we find it in Lysons's List of the Decayed Mansions of the County of Devon, it still remains the inheritance of this ancient family.
See Lysons, cxlix. v. 144, and Burke's History of the Commoners, 1st ed. vol. iv. p. 409.