Owners of the Abbey, 23 



The Abbey was probably founded by one of the Barons 

 Greystock, who held the manor of Neasham, and from whom 

 it passed by marriage to Lord Dacre, and through the co-heir 

 of Dacre to Howard. In 1670, Lord St. John, of Basing 

 (afterwards Marquis of Winchester), held the Abbey and 

 afterwards sold it to Sir William Blackett, Bart., who again 

 conveyed it, in 1698, to Charles Turner, Esq., of Kirkleatham, 

 for ;f 1 1,000, whose great-grandson. Sir Charles Turner the 

 second, sold the estate to William Wrightson, Esq. 



Dame Joan Lawson, the last prioress, surrendered the 

 monastery into the King's hands on Dec. 29th, 1540, before 

 Thomas Leigh, one of the commissioners, and survived the 

 dissolution for twenty years. On Sept. ist, 1540, Henry VIII, 

 by letters patent, granted to James Lawson, merchant, of 

 Newcastle (to whom his sister, the prioress, had, in 1537, 

 given a lease of the possessions of the Abbey), for ;f227 5s., 

 the house and site of the dissolved monastery of Neasham, 

 the church bells and burial ground, and all the houses, granges, 

 barns, buildings, cartilages, gardens and orchards, within or 

 adjoining the site and circuit of the monastery, as well as 

 possessions in adjoining parishes. 



On the death of James Lawson, descendant of the above, 

 in 1664, the inheritance devolved on his aunts, Frances and 

 Anne, the former of whom married Richard Braithwaite, Esq., 

 of Burnishead, in Westmoreland. The latter was the wife of 

 Henry Jenison, of Wynyard, whose descendants figured 

 conspicuously amongst the pioneers of racing in the North. 

 Richard Braithwaite was a scholarly man and is generally 

 admitted to have been the author of Drunken Barnaby, in 

 which occur the lines : 



