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

Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Verland : for Veylaund, as it stands in Leland's list. The Weylands of Norfolk and Suffolk bore Argent on a cross Gules five escalops Or; arms absolutely identical with those of Villiers, though I can trace no connection between the two families. They held Oxburgh (now the seat of the Bedingfelds) of "Odingsells, the superior Lord, in the time of Edward I., and ended in the fourth generation. Elizabeth Weyland, their heiress married John Harewell of Warwickshire. Thomas Weyland, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was convicted of bribery and corruption in 1290, when the great Earl of Lincoln was appointed a Commissioner for investigating the administration of justice by Edward I. He was banished the kingdom, and his whole estate and goods confiscated. "Being convicted, and fearing to yield himself to the King's mercy, he went to a monastery of Grey Friars in Suffolk, and took on him the habit of that Order; but being discovered by some of his servants, he was watched and guarded, and after two months' siege went out, forsaking his friar's cowl, and was taken and sent to the Tower."—Suckling's Suffolk.

This name is probably an interpolation. I cannot find that it is anything else but a purely English one, taken from Wayland Hundred in Norfolk, and only interesting as being derived from the scene of "The Norfolk Tragedy," where the forlorn babes perished in the wood,

"And Robin Redbreast piously
Did cover them with leaves."

"Between Watton and Merton," says Blomfield, "on the left hand, lies Wayland Wood, commonly called Wailing Wood, from a Tradition of two Infants murdered by their Uncle in this place, of which the old Ballad or Song 'Of the two Children in the Wood' is said to be made; the Original of which Tradition I don't find; the Name is a plain corruption of Wayland, and is the very Demean of and gives name to the Hundred, as is plain from the Sheriff's Turn which was always kept at a certain place in this Wood."