There can be little doubt that the original home of the Storey family is Northumberland. The neighbourhood of the Cheviot Hills is the neighbourhood wherein the "Storeys of Old" are to be first met with in early times. That they had considerable landed property is certain, and it is equally certain that owing to internecine wars they lost it. It is not therefore to be wondered at that they were described in an old Border Chronicle in the 15th century as "a race of Storeys sore decayed." Notwithstanding the vicissitudes through which the Storeys have passed, they have been a most prolific race, many generations representing families of nine, eleven and thirteen. The family has had a distinctiveness attached to it, through good report and evil, equal to that of a clan, and there is evidence indisputable that the organ of combativeness has been very strong within them. It would be the antithesis of truth to ever think of applying the words craint plomb, or the rank and file term plon-plon to early Storeys, such as is said to have been applied to the late Prince Napoleon during the Crimean war; nor yet to such later Storeys as General Philip Storey, Admiral G. Story of Dutch naval fame, and Rear-Admiral Story, who took part in the Chinese war in 1841, and assisted conspicuously at the capture of the enemy's forts at Tycockstow and Chuenpee. It is a singular fact that only one branch of the Storey or Story family can go back to the middle of the sixteenth century with anything like accuracy in genealogical respects. The Westmorland, Cumberland and, it may be added, the Furness branch can do this, but this branch is not content with such limitation, believing, and with due reason, that the Storeys of Northumberland, of Beanley, Abberwick and Hexham, the Storeys of Yorkshire - Beverley and district; those of Cumberland - Kirklinton and Arthuret, with the Storeys of Bingfield in Ireland, have a distinct kinship. It is clear to the writer that the parent-head of the north of England Storeys is now to be found in Northumberland. The Stories of Boston, U.S.A., at the head of whom stands the eminent Jurist, the late Joseph Storey, Judge of the American High Court of Common Pleas, and Daine Professor of Law at the University of Harvard, are also of north extraction. It may be stated with absolute veracity that over the Stories or Storeys the sun never sets. It is very remarkable that for a period of twenty-five years or thereabouts. the family of Mr. Gustave Story, residing in Brussels, have been collecting material for genealogical purposes. This family claims descent from three brothers who came from England, settling first at Ghent, and later at the Belgian Capital. They claim descent from Vice-Admiral Story, who served in the Dutch Fleet in 1798, and whose death took place about a century ago. It would appear that Storeys have been commercially connected with Brussels many years ago, but whether any of them settled there in the fourteenth century it is not possible at present to prove. It is, however, probable that there was a family of Storie bearing arms, settled at Stockholm. (See Coats's "Dictionary of Heraldry," 8vo, published in 1739, p. 21. Also Burke's General Armoury.")

25