Arkwright, Esq., and is situated between Hereford and Leominster. But “vixere fortes ante Agamemnona,” and there were men of mark at Coningsby long before those who took its name as their patronymic. In Domesday Book we find that Sortibrand, the son of Ulf, the Saxon, who was one of the Lagmen of Lincoln, and had “sac and soc {219b} over three mansions in that city,” as successor to his father (loco Ulf patris sui), held a berewick (a corn farm) in Coningsby. When the powerful favourite of the Conqueror, Robert Despenser, laid claim to a fishery and certain land in Coningsby, the Jurymen of the Wapentake of Horncastle decided that his claim was good, because Achi, his Saxon predecessor, had held the same in the time of Edward the Confessor. Moreover, the said Robert Despenser already held in Coningsby a berewick—“bere” (barley) land—of nine oxgangs, or some 225 acres, of meadow and wood, besides land in a score more parishes. And, again, from the same source we learn that a noble Fleming, Drogo de Bruere, who fought under the Conqueror at the battle of Hastings, and was rewarded by the gift of the whole of Holderness in Yorkshire, and other manors in Lincolnshire and elsewhere, also held land in Coningsby. Of this noble, Camden relates that the Conqueror valued his services so highly that he bestowed his own niece upon him in marriage; but that he destroyed her by poison, and then fled the country, all attempts to discover him having failed down to the time of the Domesday Survey being taken. {220a} In the List of the Gentry of Lincolnshire, made on the Herald’s Visitation of the county in 1634, and still preserved at the Herald’s College, are the names of John Carter and Clinton Whichcote, of Coningsby. {220b} In a Chancery Inquisition, post mortem, taken 31st May, 10 Henry VII., No. 72 (1495), it was found that Robert Taillebois, Knight, and John Gygour, Clerk, Warden of the College of Tatteshale, were “seized in their demesne as of fee of the manors of South Kyme, North Kyme, Conyngsby, Dokdyke, Byllingay,” and other properties. {220c} While, as an evidence of the trade of Coningsby, in a list of “Lincolnshire Town and Traders’ Tokens,” made by the late Mr. C. J. Caswell, of Horncastle, there occurs one of a Coningsby tradesman, bearing on the obverse side, “John Lupton—The Baker’s Arms,” and on the reverse side, “Of Cunsby, 1663—J. A. L.” {220d} Mr. Caswell adds a note that “where three initials are given, as in this case, the issuer’s wife is included, sometimes joined in a true lover’s knot. Mr. John Lupton (in the present day) is a well-known and respected farmer of Pinchbeck West. His daughter married T. A. Roberts, Esq., M.R.C.S., late of Coningsby.”