Surtees, ROBERT

Surtees, ROBERT, born at Durham, 1st April 1779, graduated B.A. from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1800, and, after less than two years at the Middle Temple, in 1802 came into his paternal estate of Mainsforth, near Bishop Auckland. Here till his death on 11th February 1834 he largely devoted himself to the compilation of his History and Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham (vols. i.-iii. 1816-23), to vol. iv. of which (1840), completed by the Rev. James Raine, a memoir by George Taylor is prefixed. To Scott's Minstrelsy Surtees contributed two 'ancient' ballads he himself had made—Barthram's Dirge and The Death of Featherstonhaugh. The Surtees Society, founded in 1834 for the publication of unedited MSS. relating chiefly to the northern counties, issued its seventy-third volume in 1884.