This family represents the eldest branch of the Wilbrahams of Cheshire, descended from Richard de Wilburgkam, sheriff of this county in the forty-third year of Henry III. In the third of Edward IV. the Wilbrahams were seated at Woodhay, in Cheshire, by a match with the heiress of Golborne: this, the elder line, created Baronet in 1620-1, was extinct in 1692. The present family are descended from the second son of Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhay, and were seated at Townsend in Nantwich in the reign of Elizabeth; they removed to Delamere the latter part of the eighteenth century.
Younger branches: Wilbraham Baron Skelmersdale 1828; and Wilbraham of Rode, in this county, both descended from Randle, younger brother of Roger Wilbraham, of Nantwich, who died in 1754. Wilbraham of Dorfold, sold in 1754, but existing at Falmouth in 1818, was sprung from the youngest son of Richard Wilbraham, of Nantwich, who died in 1612. See Ormerod, ii. 65; iii. 31, 184, 199.
Arms.—Argent, three bends wavy azure. The Dorfold branch bore for distinction a canton gules. Additional coat, granted by Flower, temp. Eliz.; Azure, two bars argent, on a canton of the first a wolf's head erased of the second.
Present Representative, George Fortescue Wilbraham, Esq.
Legh of East Hall, in High Legh.
Efward de Lega, who appears from his name to have been of Saxon origin, and who lived at or near the period of the Conquest, was the patriarch of this ancient family, of which the principal male line failed in the time of Edward IV. Thomas Legh, of Northwood, in the same parish of High-Legh, the ancestor of the present family, succeeded after a long litigation as the next heir male in the reign of Henry VIII. See Ormerod, i. 358.
Arms.—Allowed 1566. Argent, a lion rampant gules, armed and langued azure.
Present Representative, George Cornwall Legh, Esq. M.P. for North Cheshire.
Leigh of West Hall, in High Legh.