The Blacketts, who now reside at Wylam in Northumberland, held Hoppyland for several generations. Their ancestor, Edward Blackett, of Shildon, married for his second wife a daughter of the famous Lilburne family of Thickley-Puncharden, and a near relative of "Freeborn John." The Baronet family, who now own the old Conyers estate of Sockburn, are also descended from this Edward, and are rather curiously derived from the latter family. The first baronet’s wife was a daughter of Michael Kirkley of Newcastle, whose wife’s grandmother, Marion Anderson, was a lineal descendant of William Conyers of Wynyard.[31]
Ravensworth Castle, near Gateshead, has been the home of the Liddell family since 1607. The third owner of the name was created a Baronet by King Charles I. in 1642, and was a strong Royalist during the troubled years of that King’s reign. Since then the family has twice held peerages. Sir Henry Liddell was created Baron Ravensworth in 1747, but as he had no children the title became extinct at his death in 1784. His great-nephew, Sir Thomas Henry Liddell, took the same title on his elevation to the peerage in 1821.
Two members of the Ravensworth family have left names well known in the literary world. The second Baron, son and namesake of the first, was the author of a translation into English lyric verse of the Odes of Horace, and, in conjunction with Mr. Richards, he published in blank verse a translation of the last six books of Virgil’s Æneid. He was created Earl of Ravensworth, a title that died with his son, when the Barony passed to a cousin. The Very Rev. Henry George Liddell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, and some time Vice-Chancellor of that University, was one of the compilers of the well-known Greek lexicon.
The Bowes family was once as widely scattered over Durham as the Conyers. Streatlam Castle and Gibside, Bradley Hall, Biddick, and Thornton Hall, were all residences of the Boweses at one time. One branch only in the male line survives, and is now resident at Croft. Streatlam and Gibside, however, still belong to descendants in the female line—the Earls of Strathmore—who have added the name of their Durham ancestors to the paternal surname of Lyon.
One of the most celebrated members of this family was Old Sir William Bowes, whose devotion to the young wife he lost, when he was about twenty-eight years old, has caused him to be celebrated amongst true lovers. He lived to a great age, and never remarried.
A descendant of his, Sir George Bowes, is celebrated in local rhyme as—
"Cowardy! cowardy! Barney Castle,"
a most erroneous term, for he was, in very truth, a loyal and gallant gentleman, whose brave defence of Barnard Castle in a time of strife and rebellion perhaps saved England for Queen Elizabeth. But the Boweses have always, like most of our real old families, been a brave old race, and fully up to their motto: In multis, in magnis, in bonis expertus.
The Chaytors are descended from a certain John Chaytor, of Newcastle, merchant, whose widow remarried William Wilkinson, another merchant in the same old city.
The widow of both made her will on March 23, 1558-59, and in it, after desiring to be buried in All Saints’ Church, Newcastle, beside her last lord, mentions her two sons, Christopher and John, and her daughter, Jane Kirkhouse. John Chaytor the younger married a daughter of James Perkinson, and left two children, Elizabeth and John, living in 1579.