Rev. R. W. Bosanquet, A.M., on Rock Hall 63 



in an inquisition, described as of Scremerston and Rock, it is 

 probable that the Swynhoe family obtained Rock through the 

 heiress of Robert De Tughale marrying William de Swynhoe,* 

 (see Itaine, p. 236). Rock continued in the possession of the 

 Swynhows till about 1537, when John Swynhoe of Rock and 

 Scremerston died without issue, and Rock passed to Margery, 

 his sister, who had as her first husband Edmund Lawson of 

 Newcastle (of the family of Cramlington), and as her second 

 husband Robei-t Lawson of Usworth, who was afterwards of 

 Rock, and who died in 1565. f William Lawson, son of Margery 

 and Robert Lawson, inherited. Rock, and appears in the Heraldic 

 Visitation of 1575. The name of " Robert Lawson of Rock " 

 appears in a list of gentlemen living in Bamboroshire in 1560, 

 extracted from the second volume of Sir Ralph Sadler's State 

 Papers, by Hodgson Hinde, in his Vol. of History, p. 374. 



Thus we bring down the notice cf the Lawson family to 

 William Lawson, the son of Margery and Robert Lawson, who 

 inherited Rock, and who appears in the Heraldic Visitation of 

 1575. But a good deal of change appears to have taken 

 place in the Lawson family between 1575 and 1620; for 

 though no connexion can be traced between the families of 

 Edmund Lawson, of Newcastle, of the Cramlington family, 

 Margery Swinhoe's first husband, and Robert Lawson, of 

 Usworth, her second husband ; and though William, the son 

 of Robert Lawson, of Usworth, inherited Rock and appears 

 in the Heraldic Visitation of 1575, yet by the year 1620 the 

 property appears to have reverted to the other family, the family 

 of Edmund Lawson, olim of Cramlington ; for in that year the 

 manor of Rock and all its appurtenances were conveyed by 

 " Sir Raphe Lawson of Burgh (or Brough) in the county of 

 York, Knight," (he was knighted in the first year of 

 James the First), " Marmaduke Lawson of the same place 

 Esquier, and Thomas Fenwick of West Matfen in the County 

 of Northumberland gent.," to " John Salkeld the younger of 

 Hull Abbey in the County of Northumberland." Ralph 

 Lawson was, (as I am informed by Sir William Lawson from 



* See the Vol. of "Wills and Inventories, published by the Surtees Society in 

 1835, at p. 116, speaking of an unpublished marriage settlement of the family 

 of Grey of Horton, the editor speaks of the lady as of a young lady of rank, and 

 adds, " she was of the great family of Swinhoe of Kock Castle." 



t Sir 'William Lawson of Brough, in a paper which he sent me on the subject 

 of the pedigree of his family in 1863, says, " I have taken great pains to connect 

 the Lawsons, olim of Cramlington and subsequently of Brough, with the Law- 

 sons of Usworth (from whom the Lawsons of Cumberland, Baronets, descended), 

 but I cannot make out any connexion." 



