George Lumley’s son, John Lumley, was recreated a Peer in 1547, his father’s attainder being reversed. This John, Lord Lumley, must have been something of an Oriental in his philosophy. He was strongly imbued with the spirit of ancestor-worship. It was he who brought two stone monuments from Durham Abbey under the belief that they were of his forefathers, and set them up with a long line of effigies representing every generation of his house from a remote period. The rooms at Lumley were also hung with a series of portraits of the same individuals by his direction. About the origin of these the late Mr. Planché advanced an interesting theory, printed in 1866, in the Journal of the British Archæological Association.
Lord Lumley appears to have impressed his family importance upon William James, the contemporary Bishop of Durham, whose repetition of the pedigree so astonished that modern Solomon, King James I., that the latter evidently thought the Bishop was taking a rise out of him. "By my saul, I didna ken Adam’s name was Lumley!" said the Sovereign. Doubtless this was a natural exclamation, for it was the King’s first meeting with a pedigree drawn up by an Elizabethan Herald. He would meet others as he travelled farther South!
The estates passed on the death of this peer to a second cousin, Sir Richard Lumley. Created in 1628 a Viscount in the Peerage of Ireland, Sir Richard in later years was known as a gallant Royalist, and one of Prince Rupert’s trusted officers.
His son, another Richard, one of the commanders of the Royal army at Sedgemoor, was advanced in 1690 to the Earldom of Scarborough. Little more remains to be said, beyond that Lumleys have taken part in almost every war since that date (one, Sir William, commanded the cavalry at Albuera; and another, a captain in the navy, was killed on the Isis in 1782), and that Lumley Castle is still the seat of the Earls of Scarborough.
Closely allied to the Lumleys by marriage, the Lambtons have owned the adjoining estate of Lambton from the twelfth century. Their connection with the curious legend of the Lambton Worm has made the name widely known in the North. From the fifteenth century onwards the family were perhaps most remarkable for the brilliant series of marriages the successive owners of the estate made. Matches with Rokeby of Rokeby, Lumley of Ludworth, the Lords Eure, the Tempests of Stella, and the Curwens of Workington, each either bringing additional lands to the house, or else widening and extending the family influence, came to a climax with the marriage of Ralph Lambton, in 1696, with Dorothy Hedworth, heiress to great estates on the north bank of the river. The great-grandson of this marriage was the celebrated Radical Earl of Durham, whose life has been told in recent years by Mr. Stuart Reid.
The Greenwells are the third ancient house in this county who still dwell on the lands from which they take their name. At the time our earliest record, the Boldon Book, was compiled, William the Priest[30] held lands at Greenwell, in the green valley of Wolsingham, and his sons, James and Richard de Greenwell, took their surname from their home. From their generation through long centuries Greenwell succeeded Greenwell, until the death of Henry Greenwell in 1890. The estate then passed to his brother’s daughter, Mrs. Fletcher, who sold Greenwell within the last few years to her kinsman, Sir Walpole Eyre Greenwell, Bart.
Like other families, as the years passed by, younger sons founded branches, some of which flourished and became even more influential than the parent stem.
Anthony Greenwell, a son of Peter Greenwell of Wolsingham, and grandson of Peter Greenwell of Greenwell, living in the reign of Henry VIII., is stated to have settled at Corbridge, in the adjoining county of Northumberland. His son Ralph became allied by marriage to a number of influential families; the administration issued after the death of his father-in-law, Ralph Fenwick of Dilston, in
General John Lambton.