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 [Illustration: GENERAL JOHN LAMBTON.] 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.