On 22 August 1661 the new bishop of Durham, John Cosin, wrote to William Sancroft, later archbishop of Canterbury, relating details of the warm greeting he had received on his arrival into the bishopric from the south:

That the reception given to Cosin in the middle of the River Tees made a favourable impression upon the bishop and his entourage is confirmed by another letter written to William Sancroft a day later by Miles Stapleton, the bishop's secretary, informing him of the ‘petty triumph’ which he had witnessed on Cosin's approach to the bishopric, during which, ‘when my Lord came, the usual ceremony of delivering a great drawne faulchion was performed’. This would not be the last time that Bishop Cosin would encounter such a sword or a legend associated with it. In 1662, a year after his triumphant entry into the bishopric of Durham, Cosin undertook a survey of the episcopal estate. Among a list of the customs and services due from Bishop Auckland, where the bishop had a major residence, it was noted that:

The sword presented to Bishop Cosin on his crossing of the River Tees in 1661 was a falchion, a type of broad curved sword rather like a machete, which belonged to the Conyers family of Sockburn, a manor on the most southerly tip of the county palatine of Durham. Five years later, in the summer of 1666, the palatinate was the subject of a heraldic visitation by William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms.