Hornby Castle, North Yorkshire

At the end of the 14th century Hornby castle belonged to the St Quintin family until heiress Margaret Quintin married John Conyers (died 1422). It was largely rebuilt in the fifteenth century by William Conyers, 1st Baron Conyers, but retained the fourteenth-century St Quintin’s tower (demolished in 1927) named after the previous owners. On the death in 1557 of John Conyers, 3rd Baron Conyers, the estate passed to his daughter Elizabeth, who was married to Thomas Darcy. It descended in the Darcy family (made the Earls of Holderness in 1682) to Robert Darcy, 4th Earl of Holderness, who died in 1778. Conyers Darcy, 2nd Earl of Holderness, was elected MP for Boroughbridge in 1660 and for…