Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/163



CHAPTER VI.

THE PEDIGREES OF ANCIENT FAMILIES.

ALLEN OF ROSSALL HALL.

The Allens who resided at Rossall Hall for a period of more than half a century, and by intermarriage became connected with the Westbys of Mowbreck, the Heskeths of Mains, and the Gillows of Bryning, sprang from the county of Stafford. At the time of the Protestant Reformation, George Allen, of Brookhouse, in the division just mentioned, held a long lease of the Grange and Hall of Rossall from a kinsman of his family, one of the abbots of Deulacres, a Staffordshire monastery, to which the estate had been granted by King John. George Allen at his death left one son, John, who resided at the Hall, and subsequently married Jane, the sister of Thomas Lister, of Arnold Biggin, in Yorkshire. The offspring of this marriage were Richard, William, Gabriel, George, who espoused Elizabeth, the daughter of William Westby, of Mowbreok; Mary, afterwards the wife of Thomas Worthington, of Blainscow; Elizabeth, subsequently the wife of William Hesketh, of Mains Hall; and Anne, who married George Gillow, of Bryning. Richard Allen, of Rossall Hall, the eldest son, left at his demise a widow with three daughters, named respectively, Helen, Catherine, and Mary, who were deprived of their possessions and rights in the Grange in the year 1583 by Edmund Fleetwood, whose father had purchased the reversion of the lease from Heury VIII., at the time when the larger monastic institutions were dissolved in