Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 32.djvu/440

Leigh His portrait, by Captain Charles Mercier, was included in the collection of portraits of inventors at the South Kensington Museum.

 LEIGH, FERDINAND (1585?–1654), governor of the Isle of Man, born about 1585, was the eldest son and heir of Thomas Leigh of Middleton, Yorkshire, by Elizabeth Stanley of the Derby family, maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth. On his father's death in 1594 Ferdinand was left owner of vast estates near Leeds, Rothwell, Haigh, Middleton, &c. His mother married again one Richard Houghton of Lancashire. In 1617 he was knighted at York. In 1625 he was deputy-governor of Man under his relative the Earl of Derby, a post he appears only to have held for about a year. He was a gentleman of the king's privy chamber, and an enthusiastic royalist, contributing 100l. to the royal cause when the king assembled the gentry of Yorkshire at York. During the war he fought as colonel of a troop of horse, with his eldest son and successor, John, under him as captain. In 1650 he was threatened by the committee for advance of money with the forced sale of his Yorkshire property. He died at Pontefract on 19 Jan. 1654, and is buried in the ruined church there. Leigh married four times: first, Margery, daughter of William Cartwright; secondly, Mary, daughter of Thomas Pilkington; thirdly, Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Tirwhit; fourthly, Anne, daughter of Edmund Clough; and was twice a widower before he was thirty. His second wife was a collateral descendant of James Pilkington, the first protestant bishop of Durham. He had eight children, the youngest being born about 1630; his eldest son (by Anne Clough), John, succeeded to his estates, and died in 1706.

 LEIGH, FRANCIS, first (d. 1653), son of Sir Francis Leigh, by Mary, daughter of Thomas Egerton, viscount Brackley [q. v.], and great-grandson of Sir Thomas Leigh or Lee [q. v.] of Stoneleigh, was born at his father's seat at Newnham Regis, Warwickshire, before 1600. His father was made a K.B. at the coronation of James I on 25 July 1603, sat in the parliaments of 1601, 1604, and 1621 respectively, and was a member of the Derby House Society of Antiquaries, together with Sir Henry Spelman, Sir Robert Cotton, and Camden. He was an intimate friend of the latter, who left him by his will 4l. for a memorial ring. Some pieces by Leigh are preserved in Hearne's 'Curious Discourses of Eminent Antiquaries' (see Notes and Queries, 7th ser. viii. 7, 92). The son was created a baronet by James I on 24 Dec. 1618, at which time he was also a trustee of Rugby School. He was elected M.P. for Warwick in 1625, and, giving consistent support to the court, was rewarded by being raised to the peerage as Lord Dunsmore by letters patent dated 31 July 1628. He was made captain of the band of gentlemen pensioners and sworn privy councillor in 1641, and on 15 March in the following year he signed a protest with five other lords against the ordinance of the commons with regard to the militia. On the outbreak of the civil war he subscribed money to levy forty horse 'to assist his Majesty in defence of his Royal person, the two houses of Parliament, and the Protestant religion' (, Army Lists, 2nd edit. p. 9). In August 1642 his park at Newnhamwas despoiled of its venison by the parliamentary soldiers quartered under Lord Brooke at Coventry (State Papers, Dom. 1642, p. 382).

On 3 July 1644 the king fortified his loyalty by creating him Earl of Chichester. In May 1645 he was on the commission appointed to govern Oxford during the king's absence (ib. p. 81). He was, however, more of a courtier than a soldier, and was several times employed as commissioner on the part of the crown during the troubles, notably to meet the Scottish commissioners at Ripon in the autumn of 1640 and those of the Parliament at Uxbridge in 1645 (, viii. 211).

Clarendon had no high opinion of his qualities as a statesman, describing him as of a froward and violent disposition, deficient in judgment and temper, whose 'greatest reputation was that the Earl of Southampton married his daughter, who was a beautiful and worthy lady' (ib. vi. 391). Lloyd, on the other hand, in his 'Memoires' (ed. 1668, P. 653), writes of him as 'a stout, honest man in his council,' with 'a shrewd way of expressing and naming' his views.

Leigh appeared several times before the committee for compounding, being assessed in November 1645 to pay, as Earl of Chichester, the sum of 3,000l.; he was given a year in which to make payment (Cal. Proc. Comm. Advance of Money, p. 628). On 26 Jan. following, however, having paid 1,000l. and given security for 1,847l. more, his seques- 