Page:Sussex Archaeological Collections, volume 6.djvu/105

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SOME SUSSEX FAMILIES.
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man's son and heir, Richard Fitz Alan, Earl of Arundel, is thus described in the Roll of the knights at the siege of Carlaverock, in June, 1300:

"Richard le Comte de Aroundel
Beau chevalier et bien aime
I vi je richement arme
En rouge au lion rampant de or."

The Fitz Alans bore previously barry of 8 or and gules; and a controversy is noticed in the last-mentioned roll as having sprung up between this family and that of Poyntz respecting their each bearing the same arms.

Lunsford.—This ancient family took its rise at Lundresford, in Echingham, in the time of Edward the Confessor. The arms borne by them are a chevron between 3 boars' heads couped (21); but these are probably a variation made by a younger branch, or an adoption at some early period of a coat borne by some family into which they had married; for there cannot be much doubt that, like as in the case of the Wistons and others, the original bearing was three boars' heads, many of the derivatives being now unknown, or to be met with in other names and counties, though four of them there is strong presumption for assigning to Sussex families, viz., Luxford, Platsted, and Cobden. A monumental inscription to the memory of one of the Luxfords of Wartling, states that that family had been buried in the parish for some centuries. Now Luxford, as a corruption of Lundesford, is not so violent a change in sound and spelling as many that are proved to be the same name; the name of Luxford is not to be found in the county in early records, and the preceding statement coupled with the fact of the arms having an evident cognate origin with those of Lundresford, leaves little room to doubt that both families come of one and the same stock.

In Budgen's Map of Sussex, published in 1724, 3 boars' heads argent on an azure field (22) are given as the arms of George Luxford of Windmill Hill, Gent., and also of — Luxford of Nessington. The same charges occur on a pile (23) as the coat of one of the name on a monument in Clayton Church in the eighteenth century. The arms of Playsted, ermine 3 boars' heads couped gules (24), there seems sufficient reason to trace up to the same source as that of the Luxfords and