Christopher Chaytor became an important public man, and, besides acquiring the Manor of Butterby, near Durham, gathered into the family fold the great estate of the noble old house of Clervaux, of Croft, and founded the present Baronet Chaytors. His son Thomas married a daughter of Sir Nicholas Tempest, Bart., of Stella; and his son again, Nicholas Chaytor, was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Army under the famous fighting Marquess of Newcastle, and by his wife, a Lambton heiress, was father of Sir William, created a Baronet in 1671. This baronetcy became extinct on the death of the first holder in 1720, but was again revived when Sir William Chaytor was created a Baronet in 1801.
The Tempests, as already mentioned, were relatives of the Chaytors. They came into the county from Yorkshire, when Sir William Tempest, of Studley, married the heiress of the Washingtons of Washington. His natural son, Rowland, acquired a considerable estate by marrying one of the many coheirs of the great baronial family of Umphreville, and was ancestor of the various families of the name seated in this county.
Sir Nicholas Tempest, of Stella Hall, in the reign of James I., was created a Baronet, and was buried at Ryton in 1625.
His younger brother, Rowland Tempest, was ancestor of the Tempests of the Isle and Old Durham, whose representative some hundred years later, John Tempest, who was many years M.P. for the city of Durham, left a daughter Frances, who became eventually heiress of this branch of the family. She married the Rev. Sir Henry Vane, Bart., Prebendary of Durham Cathedral, a descendant of the famous Sir Henry Vane the elder, and her son, assuming his mother’s name, became Sir Henry Vane-Tempest. He left an only daughter, Frances Anne Emily, who married the third Marquess of Londonderry as his second wife, and was grandmother of the present Marquess.
The Vanes, who descend from a common ancestor with the Earls of Westmorland, have only been connected with Durham since the reign of James I., when Sir Henry Vane, of Hadlo Castle, a Kentish knight, acquired Raby Castle by grant from the Crown. His youngest son was ancestor of the Marquesses of Londonderry, and his eldest son was ancestor of the late Duke of Cleveland and of the present Lord Barnard.
The Williamsons came into this county through a strange decree of fate. The estate of Monkwearmouth passed from its purchaser, Colonel George Fenwick, of Brinkburn, the well-known Puritan, to his daughter Dorothy, who married Sir Thomas Williamson, of East Markham, in Nottinghamshire. Sir Thomas belonged to a Cavalier family that had lost much in the Royal cause.
Sir William, the fourth Baronet, married a sister of Mrs. Lambton, of Lambton, and co-heiress of John Hedworth, of Harraton, whose wife was a descendant of William James, sometime Bishop of Durham. Whitburn Hall has for several generations been the family residence, and the present Baronet is the ninth.