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

This great historical family is traced to the Conquest, Richard Talbot, living at that period, being the first recorded ancestor. No family in England is more connected with the history of our country than this noble race; few are more highly allied. The Marches of Wales appear to be the original seat; afterwards we find the Talbots in Shropshire, in Staffordshire, (where their estates were inherited from the Verdons in the time of the Edwards,) and lastly in Yorkshire, at Sheffield, derived from the great heiress of Neville Lord Furnival. This was the seat of the first seven Earls of Shrewsbury, of whom an excellent biographical account will be found in Hunter's Hallamshire (p. 43). The manor of Grafton, formerly the estate of the Staffords, was granted by Henry VII. to Sir Gilbert Talbot in 1486; it afterwards became the seat of a younger branch, who eventually, on the death of the eighth Earl, became Earls of Shrewsbury, from whom all the succeeding Earls, to the decease of Bertram Arthur, 17th Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1856, were descended. The present and 18th Earl, who is also the 3rd Earl Talbot, springs from the second marriage of Sir John Talbot of Albrighton in Shropshire, and of Grafton, in this county, who died in 1550, and who was grandfather of the 9th and ancestor of the succeeding Earls.

Younger Branch. Talbot, Baron Talbot of Malahide in Ireland, (1831,) descended from Richard, second son of Richard Talbot and Maud Montgomery, the third ancestor of the House of Shrewsbury, who was living in 1153.

See Nash's Worcestershire, vol. i. p. 158; Brydges's Collins, vol. iii. p. i.; and the Shrewsbury Peerage Claim before the House of Lords, 1857.

Arms.—Gules, a lion rampant within a border engrailed or. Borne by Sir Gilbert Talbot in the reign of Edward II. (Rolls), and said to be the coat of Rhese ap Griffith, Prince of South Wales. The ancient arms of Talbot being Bendy of ten argent and gules. The Talbots of Malahide bear the border erminoise instead of or.

Present Representative, Henry John Chetwynd Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury, and third Earl Talbot.

Winnington of Stanford; Baronet 1755.

Descended from Paul Winnington, living in 1615, great-grandson of Robert, who was son of Thomas Winnington of the Birches, in the county of Chester, living in the reign of Henry VII. This Thomas represented a younger branch of the Winningtons, of Winnington, in the same county, descended from Robert, son of Lidulfus de Croxton, who took the name of Winnington in the reign of Edward I., on his marriage with Margery, daughter and heiress of Robert de Winnington, living in the fifty-sixth of Henry III. Stanford, formerly the seat of the Salways, came to the Winningtons in the early part of the reign of Charles II., on the marriage of Sir Francis Wilmington and Elizabeth Salway.

See Ormerod's Cheshire, vol. ii. p. 112, vol. iii. pp. 74 and 93; Pedigree privately printed by Sir Thomas Phillipps, from an original MS. penes Sir Thomas Winnington, Bart.; and Nash's Worcestershire, vol. ii. p. 368.

Arms.—Argent, an inescucheon voided, within an orle of martlets sable.