The Bolden Buke is a small folio, deposited in the office of the bishop's
auditor, at Durham.]

The family changed its surname with its estate, and thenceforward assumed
that of DE WESSYNGTON. [Footnote: The name is probably of Saxon origin. It
existed in England prior to the Conquest. The village of Wassengtone is
mentioned in a Saxon charter as granted by king Edgar in 973 to Thorney
Abbey.--_Collectanea Topographica_, iv., 55.] The condition of
military service attached to its manor will be found to have been often
exacted, nor was the service in the grand hunt an idle form. Hunting came
next to war in those days, as the occupation of the nobility and gentry.
The clergy engaged in it equally with the laity. The hunting establishment
of the Bishop of Durham was on a princely scale. He had his forests, chases
and parks, with their train of foresters, rangers, and park keepers. A
grand hunt was a splendid pageant in which all his barons and knights
attended him with horse and hound. The stipulations with the Seignior of
Wessyngton show how strictly the rights of the chase were defined. All the
game taken by him in going to the forest belonged to the bishop; all taken
on returning belonged to himself. [Footnote: Hutchinson's Durham vol. ii.,
p. 489.]

Hugh de Pusaz (or De Pudsay) during whose episcopate we meet with this
first trace of the De Wessyngtons, was a nephew of king Stephen, and a
prelate of great pretensions; fond of appearing with a train of
ecclesiastics and an armed retinue. When Richard Coeur de Lion put every
thing at pawn and sale to raise funds for a crusade to the Holy Land, the
bishop resolved to accompany him. More wealthy than his sovereign, he made
magnificent preparations. Besides ships to convey his troops and retinue,
he had a sumptuous galley for himself, fitted up with a throne or episcopal