1623, showing that the latter left five daughters, his coheirs. Of these, Isabel, the eldest, married Ralph Greenwell, Mary married John Swinburne, Agnes was wife to John Orde, Margaret to George Tempest of Winlaton, and Barbara married William Harrison.
Ralph’s grandson Nicholas, so named after his mother’s father Nicholas Leadbitter of Warden, married, in 1683, Frances Whitfield, and their son, Whitfield Greenwell, a captain in the army, was killed at the Battle of Glenshiels in 1719. From his grandson, John Greenwell, of the India House, the present Sir Walpole Greenwell is lineally descended.
A second branch of the family has long been known as the Greenwells of Greenwell Ford, thus curiously taking their name from the old home in Wolsingham parish and giving it to the new (though its very newness has now grown green with age) home near Lanchester.
Thomas Greenwell, probably a younger son of John Greenwell of Greenwell, living circa 1440, took up his abode at Stobilee, in the parish of Satley (the vill of which had been held in chief in the early days of the fourteenth century by Robert de Greenwell), and there his descendants resided until the time of the Commonwealth, when the then head of the family, William Greenwell, was sequestered as a Royalist, his lands being taken from him, and let to Henry Blackett by the Parliamentary Commissioners.
Nicholas Greenwell, a younger brother of the Royalist William, founded the house of Ford, purchasing that estate in 1633. He married at Medomsley, in 1623, Mary Kirkley, probably a near relative of Michael Kirkley of Newcastle, whose daughter married the first Sir William Blackett. This Michael Kirkley mentions in his will, which he made in 1620, amongst other relatives, his cousin, Mr. William Greenwell the elder, of London, merchant, to whom William Camden, the Herald, had confirmed in 1602 "the antient armes of the worshipfull family of Greenwell, of Grenewell Hill, in the County Palatine of Duresme, from which the said William Greenwell is descended." This London branch of the family ended with an heiress, who married Thomas Legh, of Ridge, in Cheshire.
Returning to Nicholas Greenwell of Ford, he died in 1640, and was buried amongst his ancestors at Lanchester. His son, another William, added lands at Kibblesworth to the paternal estate by marriage with an heiress of the Cole family. He died at an advanced age in 1701, when his eldest son, Nicholas, succeeded to Greenwell Ford, whilst Kibblesworth passed to his younger son, Robert. The latter was great-grandfather of the late Major-General Sir Leonard Greenwell, K.C.B., who, in 1820, acted as godfather to the present venerable head of the family, the author of Greenwell’s Glory, one of, if not, the best trout flies known.
Other branches of the family have flourished for awhile and then disappeared. In 1697 William Greenwell of Whitworth acquired a moiety, including the mansion-house of Great Chilton, where his descendants lived for some three generations. One of his daughters married Cuthbert Smith, whose brother Ralph became his heir. This hunting squire bequeathed his property, for no other reason but that they had often ridden together
"From the drag to the chase, from the chase to the view,
From the view to the death in the morning,"
to Robert Surtees of Milkwellburn.