Prior to dealing with the pedigrees of the Storys or Stories of Justice Town, Stories of the Lake, Stories of Boston, U.S.A., it appears most fitting that attention should be paid to the Storeys of Beanley and Abberwick, the Stories of Bingfield, Hexham, and their Durham and Yorkshire branches. We have already seen that Bishop Story bore a very ancient coat of arms; all the north country Stories or Storeys bear similar escutcheons. The arms as borne by Dr. Story, Bishop of Carlisle, et subsequens Chichester, are probably correctly described in the Atkinson MSS. and pedigrees, namely, per fesse, argent and sable, a pale counterchanged, three storks proper.* The Bingfield, Hexham, Stories bore like arms. White birds on argent are at any rate singular. The Storeys of Beanley and Abberwick bore arms akin to both. We have seen Sir Thomas Musgrave's report to Lord Burghley, in 1583., concerning the Graemes and the Stories, and how the latter (amongst them a Rauf) fled from the fury of the Lord Warden-Lord Daker. It has likewise been seen that the late Canon Tristram discovered the fact while in the library of Sir Walter Elliot of Wolflee, that a Ralph Storey of Beanley figures in a Northumberland muster-roll as one engaged in the battle of Flodden Field (1613). Ralf, Ingersome or Ingelram and Rynion are ancient Storey Christian names. They constantly occur in the Kirklinton and Arthuret Church registers, and there can be little doubt that when the Stories were driven from their possessions in Eskdale, long before Sir Thomas Musgrave wrote his report to Lord Burghley, they settled in the two counties- Northumberland and Durham. At Beanley a Ralf Storey would, at the end of the fifteenth century, be the chief of his house. The connection of the various branches of the Story or Storey family will be proved by quotations from the "Border Papers," from Mr. Robert Bruce Armstrong's "History of Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ewesdale and Wauchope, and the Debatable Land," from Northumberland County History" (published in 1899, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, an able work in eight quarto volumes, edited by John Crawford Hodgson, F.S.A.), from "Memories of Hexham," ancient Court Rolls and Fines, and from various other works of record and family histories. The famous old border family of Armstrong, the French equivalent of whose name is Fortinbras, was allied by marriage to the Storyes. On pages 20 and 122 of "Border Papers" I find that "Thom Armestronge, called Sim's Thom, dwelleth in the Demayne Holme by 'Lendall syde,' and that he maryed Wat Storye's daughter of Eske, called 'Wat of the Hove (How) Ende' ante 1583. Fergus, or Phergus, and Phargus is a common appellation in the families of both Graham and Armstrong. It is a Keltic and Erse name signifying a man of strength.

Blood-feuds, in other words, the quarrels of relations are always of the bitterest nature. When the Storeys were dispossessed of their properties in the East and West

*The Storey Arms will be fully explained at the proper period.

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