Sir Percival Willoughby
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Sir Percival Willoughby, circa 1553 to August 1643 and originally of Bore Place, in Kent became by marriage one of the Willoughbys of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, England.
The Willoughby family line is complex and inter-woven. A branch of the family who took their name from Willoughby-on-the-Wolds made their fortune from coal at Wollaton in Nottinghamshire and eventually built Wollaton Hall in the late sixteenth century on the back of coal revenues.
Wollaton Hall was built by Sir Francis Willoughby. As he had no son of his own Sir Francis married his daughter, Bridget, to Sir Percival Willoughby of Bore Place in Kent in order to secure the line although the inheritance was a legal minefield. Percival, according to Burke's Peerage, was a lineage descendant of Baron Willoughby de Eresby. Sir Percival Willoughby was to become the business partner of Huntingdon Beaumont during the early 1600s and the Wollaton Wagonway, the world's earliest railway with provenance, was built across the Willoughby's Wollaton Manor just west of Nottingham, England. Burke's Peerage also validates that this line was the one which received the hereditary Baronetcy - Lord Middleton. The aristocratic line still survives and the current Baron lives near Malton in Yorkshire.
[edit] References
- Marshall, P (1999), Wollaton Hall and the Willoughby Family, Nottingham Civic Society.
