[Illustration] Sir John de Bingham, Knight, who lived in the reign
of Henry I., is the first recorded ancestor of this ancient family;
he was of Sutton, in the county of Somerset. Melcombe was inherited
from an heiress of Turberville in the time of Henry III., and has
been ever since the residence of the Binghams, of whom the most
remarkable was Sir Richard, a younger son of the head of the family
in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who greatly distinguished himself
in Ireland.
Younger branch. The Earls of Lucan in the Peerage of Ireland (1795)
descended from George, fourth son of Robert Bingham and Alice Coker,
and younger brother of Sir Richard.
See Hutchins's History of Dorset, vol. iv. 202; and Archdall's
Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, vii. 104.
ARMS.--_Azure, a bend cotised between six crosses patée or_.
Present Representative, Richard Hippisley Bingham, Esq.
RUSSELL OF KINGSTON-RUSSELL, DUKE OF BEDFORD 1694, EARL OF BEDFORD
1550.
[Illustration] Although this family may be said to have made their
fortune in the reign of Henry VII., first by Mr. John Russell's
accidental meeting with Philip Archduke of Austria, and his
consequent introduction to the King, and secondly by the large share
of ecclesiastical plunder acquired by this same John at the
Dissolution of the Monasteries, yet there is no reason to doubt that
the Russells are sprung from a younger branch of an ancient baronial
family, of whom the elder line were known by the name of Gorges, and
were Barons of Parliament in the time of Edward III.
The Russells were seated at Kingston as early as the reign of Henry
III.
See Wiffen's House of Russell, and Brydges's Collins, i. 266, &c.
ARMS.--_Argent, a lion rampant gules, on a chief sable three
escallops of the first_.
Present Representative, William Russell, 8th Duke of Bedford,
K.G.
DIGBY OF TILTON, BARON DIGBY OF SHERBORNE 1765, BARON DIGBY OF
GEASHILL IN IRELAND 1620.
[Illustration] An ancient Leicestershire family, to be traced nearly
to the Conquest, and supposed to be of Saxon origin. The name is
derived from Digby, in Lincolnshire; but Tilton, in the county of
Leicester, where AElmar, the first recorded ancestor of the Digbys,
held lands in 1086, also gave name to the earlier generations of the
family. These ancient possessions have long ceased to belong to the
Digbys; and by the will of the last Earl Digby, who died in 1856,
the manor of Coleshill, in Warwickshire, granted by Henry VII. to
Simon Digby, and the Castle of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, have also
been alienated from the male line of the family.
There have been several branches of the Digbys both in England and
Ireland, besides the extinct Earls of Bristol. During the
seventeenth century the history of the family, as evinced in the
lives of the celebrated Sir Kenelm Digby and the Earl of Bristol, is
very remarkable.
See Leland's Itin., iv. fo. 19; Dugdale's Warwickshire, 2nd ed.,
vol. ii. 1012; and Pedigree of Digby of Tilton, Eye, Kettleby,
Sisonby, North Luffenham, and Welby, in Nichols's Leicestershire,
ii. pt. i. p. *261; for a more extended Pedigree see vol. iii. pt.
i. p. 473, under Tilton; Brydges's Collins, v. 348; Hutchins's
Dorset, iv. 133; and for an account of the famous Digby Pedigree,
compiled by order of Sir Kenelm in 1634, at the expense, it is said,
of £1200, see Pennant's Journey from Chester to London, 8vo.
1811, p. 441; and for portraits of the Digbys at Gothurst, ib. p.
449.
ARMS.--_Azure, a fleur-de-lis argent_.
Present Representative, Edward St. Vincent Digby, 9th Baron Digby of
Geashill.
+Gentle.+