"The family of Yorke first came into prominence with the great Chancellor Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke. This remarkable man, who was the son of an attorney at Dover, descended, it is claimed, from the Yorkes of Hannington in North Wiltshire, a family of some consequence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was born in that town in the year 1690, and rose from a comparatively humble station to the commanding position he held so long in English public life."