[Illustration] The Vernons were originally of Cheshire, and Barons
of Shipbrooke, but became connected with Derbyshire by the heiress
of Avenell's marriage with Richard Vernon in the 12th century; their
son died s.p.m. leaving a daughter and heiress married to Gilbert le
Francis, whose son Richard took the name of Vernon, seated himself
at Haddon Hall in this county, and was the ancestor of the different
branches of the House of Vernon. The Sudbury Vernons settled there
in the reign of Henry VIII., and, by the extinction of the other
lines, became in the end the chief of the family. Few houses have
been more connected together by intermarriage than the Vernons.
Younger branches. The Vernon-Harcourts, now of Nuneham Courteney,
co. Oxon; the Vernons of Hilton, Staffordshire; and the
Vernon-Wentworths, of Wentworth Castle, Yorkshire.
See Lysons, liii.; Brydges's Collins, vii. 396; Topographer, ii.
217, for inscriptions to the Vernons at Sudbury, which came from the
heiress of Montgomery: for Vernon of Houndhill, in the parish of
Henbury, and of Harleston in Clifton Camville, see Shaw's
Staffordshire, i. 87, 399, and the Topographer, ii. 11: and for
Vernon of Tonge, Topographer, iii. 109, and Eyton's Antiquities of
Shropshire, vol. ii. p. 191.
ARMS.--_Argent, fretty sable_. This coat, with _a quarter gules_,
was borne by Monsr. Richard Vernon in the reign of Richard II.
(Roll.)
Present Representative, George John Warren, 5th Baron Vernon.