The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. II.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Meneuile : long seated in the counties of Durham and Northumberland. Milburn, a member of the Morpeth barony, was held of it by knight's service, by Robert de Meneville: see Mackenzie's Northumberland. In the former county their manor-house at Sledwish, near Whorlton, and within a few fields of the Tees, was granted to them at an early date by the old Lords of Barnard's Castle; they also held Winston, &c, and one of them, Robert de Menevill, received from King John the hand of Agnes de Dyvelstoun (Dilston) a Northumbrian heiress. Another Robert, Sheriff of Durham in 1339, acquired the Lordship of Horden by purchase from Sir Thomas Holland in 1343; and left three sons, of whom the youngest alone was married, and had an only daughter, Isabel. This Isabel, generally called the. Lady of Horden, became the heiress, and the estate passed to her son by her second husband, Sir William Claxton. Probably the William de Meyneyvyle who was twice High Sheriff, first in 1364 and again in 1370, was one of her uncles. The family appears seated at Sledwish in the following century, and finally came to grief in the first year of Queen Mary's reign.

"Ninyan Menvill was a partisan of Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; and, it should seem, joined in proclaiming Lady Jane Grey Queen on the death of Edward VI.; for he was attainted 'of high treason committed at Durham House on the 10th of July, I. Mary, in company with John, Duke of Northumberland, Andrew Dudley, and John Gayts, Knights, and others.' Menvill escaped with life, fled, and was outlawed. The Dudleys found favour in the eyes of Elizabeth; and perhaps by a natural revulsion of feeling, all those who, for whatever cause, had suffered under the late reign, seemed entitled to grace and mercy from a successor who had herself tasted of the bitter cup of persecution. Menvill was restored in blood and estate in the first of Elizabeth, whilst the temporalities of the See were in the Crown. Yet it seemed doubtful whether Menvill ever recovered possession of Sledwish. The Crown, I apprehend, sometimes granted these patents of reversal without much minute inquiry into existing circumstances, and the parties interested were left to fight out their battle as they might."—Surtees. At all events, there is no further record of the Menvilles in the county histories. Their old manor-house is thus described: "Sledwish Hall, lonely and sequestered, is a place of ghastly gray renown. There are tales of secret passages and concealments; and some years ago the bones of an infant were found carefully deposited in a stone coffin in an adjoining field. The circumstance only infers that some of the Catholic residents here might bury their dead privately with their own ceremonies, and some persecuted priest may very possibly have found refuge here during the horrors of the Popish plot." Yet it was for conspiring to place a Protestant princess on the throne that poor Ninian Menville was attainted and outlawed.

Surtees believes the family to have been "a branch of the Lords Menill of Cleveland." But the two names are certainly distinct; for "Dominus de Meneuilla 1 feod. lig.:" is found in Duchesne's Feoda Normanniae.