_Willy_, _Villi_, or _Billi_ with the Germans, like _Poly_ amongst the Greeks, before several names indicates "many," consequently _Wilhelm_, now softened into _William_, means "Much defence" or "Defence of many." Not only did the Normans, who had settled here when their Duke became King of England, call their sons after their victorious sovereign, but many of the old lords of the soil, who, wearied with Harold's tyranny, had gladly welcomed the advent of the foreign prince, gave their children the name now so much in vogue. In addition to this compliment to their new King, some of the Saxon Thanes and great landed proprietors moulded their rougher Northern surnames into courtly Norman terminations. Thus Gaskin, an old West Riding family, Normanised itself into Gascoigne. As time went on, this Royal name of William was regularly transmitted from father to son amongst those families who depended upon the Conqueror or his line, or who had received gifts of offices, lands, seignories, or privileges, until in a few years it became so common amongst those of high rank, that at a certain festival given at the Court of King Henry II., when Sir William St. John and Sir William Fitz-Hamon, two especial officers, commanded that none "but those of the name of William should dine in the Great Chamber with them," they were accompanied by a hundred and twenty Williams, all knights. Sir William Gascoigne, Chief Justice of the King's Bench in 1401, the second year of the reign of King Henry IV., was the eighth Sir William in lineal descent, and was succeeded, as we learn from Dugdale and Fuller, by seven more Sir Williams, all knights. The Chief Justice was born in 1350, _temp._ Edward III., at Gawthorp, in the parish of Harwood, between Leeds and Knaresborough. Sir William was the eldest of five brothers. He married twice: first, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Alexander Mowbray, and by her had an only son, Sir William Gascoigne, of Gawthorp, a brave commander in the wars under King Henry V. His descendant, the last Sir William of this branch, married Beatrice, daughter of Sir Richard Tempest, and had four sons, all of whom died young, and one daughter, Margaret, his sole heir, in whom the Gascoignes of this line terminated. This daughter married, in 1552, Thomas Wentworth, of Wentworth Woodhouse, in Yorkshire, and brought great estates into that family. Thomas Wentworth was Sheriff for Yorkshire in the twenty-fourth year of Queen Elizabeth, and had, besides four daughters, an only son, who became afterwards Sir William Wentworth, and was the father of Thomas, first Earl of Strafford.