* The Iretons of Little Ireton, in the county of Derby, extinct in 1711, were in fact the elder line of the family, sprung from Henry, eldest son of Fulcher, and elder brother of Sewallis de Shirley.
Bracebridge of Atherstone.
In the time of King John, the venerable family of Bracebridge, originally of Bracebridge in Lincolnshire, acquired by marriage in the person of Peter de Bracebridge with Amicia, daughter of Osbert de Arden and Maud, and granddaughter of Turchill de Warwick, the manor of Kingsbury in this county, an ancient seat of the Mercian Kings, and inherited by Turchill, called the last Saxon Earl of Warwick, with his second wife Leverunia. The descendants of which Peter and Amicia had their principal seat at Kingsbury till about the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, when it was sold, and the Atherstone estate purchased. "Kinisbyri is a fair manor place," writes Leland, in his Itinerary, "and lordship of 140 li.; one Bracebridge is lord of it; it is in Warwikshir." At Bracebridge, on the river Witham, near Lincoln, the original seat of the family, so called it is supposed from the two bridges which still exist there, a grant of free warren was obtained in the 29th of Edward I., which was still retained by Thomas Bracebridge, Esq. who died in 1567.
The Bracebridges represent the Holtes of Aston, near Birmingham, and, through that ancient family, the Breretons of Cheshire.
See Dugdale's Warwickshire, vol. ii. p. 1057-1061; Nichols's Leicestershire, vol. iii. part ii. p. 1145; for Holte, see Dugdale's Warwickshire, vol. ii. p. 871, and Davidson's History of the Holtes of Aston, fol. 1854; for Brereton, see Ormerod's Cheshire, vol. iii. pt. 31.
Arms.—Vair, argent and sable, a fess gules. This coat was borne by Sir John de Brasbruge, de co. Lincoln, in the reign of Edward II. and again by Monsire de Brasbridge in those of Edward III. and Richard III. (Rolls).
Present Representative, Charles Holte Bracebridge, Esq.
Compton of Compton Wyniate, Marquess of Northampton 1812; Earl 1618; Baron 1572.
