The Noble and Gentle Men of England / or, notes touching the arms and descents of the ancient knightly and gentle houses of England, arranged in their respective counties.

by Evelyn Philip Shirley

Stanhope, in the wapentake of Darlington in the bishoprick of Durham, gave name to this knightly family, of whom the first recorded ancestor is Walter de Stanhope, whose son Richard died at Stanhope, in 1338 or 1339. In the reign of Edward III. we find Sir Richard Stanhope, grandson of Walter, Mayor of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Hampton and other manors in this county came by marriage with the heiress of Maulovel about 1370; but on the death of Richard Stanhope in 1529, these estates went to his only daughter and heiress, who became the wife of John Babington. The monastery of Shelford was soon after this period granted to Sir Michael Stanhope (in the 31st of Henry VIII).

Younger Branches. 1. Stanhope of Holme-Lacy, Baronet 1807, descended from the youngest brother of the great-grandfather of the present Earl. 2. Stanhope Earl Stanhope 1718, descended from the eldest son of the second marriage of the first Earl of Chesterfield. 3. Stanhope Earl of Harrington 1742, descended from Sir John Stanhope, younger brother by the half-blood of the first Earl of Chesterfield.

See Lord Mahon's (now Earl Stanhope) Notices of the Stanhopes. 8vo., 1855; Thoroton's Nottinghamshire, 147; Surtees's Durham, ii. 46; and Brydges's Collins, iii. 407, iv. 171, and 284.

Arms.—Quarterly ermine and gules. And so borne in the reign of Edward III., but after the match with Maulovel, who brought into the family the estate and seat of Rampton from the heiress of Longvillers, the arms of that family, viz. Sable, a bend between six cross-crosslets argent, were assumed; on losing that great estate, Sir Michael Stanhope resumed the more ancient coat in the reign of Henry VIII.

Present Representative, George Stanhope, 6th Earl of Chesterfield.

Willoughby of Wollaton, Baron Middleton 1711.

This is a younger and now the only remaining male branch of the great Lincolnshire family of Willoughby, descended from Sir Thomas Willoughby, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the reign of Henry VIII., youngest son of Sir Christopher Willoughby of Eresby, who was sprung from Sir William Willoughby of Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and lord of that manor in the reign of Edward I. Wollaton was inherited from the heiress of Willoughby (of another family) in the thirty-eighth year of Queen Elizabeth.

See Brydges's Collins, vi. 591, vii. 215; and for the Nottinghamshire family, see Thoroton, p. 221; and for the tombs of this ancient house, pp. 36, 223, 227; see also Dugdale's Warwickshire, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 1052.

Arms.—Or, fretty azure. And so borne by Robert de Willoughby in 1300, as appears by the Roll of Carlaverock; but after the death of Bishop Bek, his maternal uncle, in the 4th of Edward II. he adopted the coat of Bek, Gules, a mill-rind argent. See Nicolas's Roll of Carlaverock, p, 328.