Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/172

 daughter of Edwin Fleetwood, of Leyland, in 1674. The offspring of that union were two sons, Edward and Paul, and a daughter Margaret. Edward, the heir, was born in 1682, and practised for some time as an attorney in Ireland. On the death of his father, however, he inherited the property, and took up his abode at the ancestral Hall. He espoused Sarah, the daughter of Edward Veale, of Whinney Heys. Thomas Tyldesley, of Fox Hall, Blackpool, was on terms of friendship and intimacy with the Fleetwoods of Rossall at that period, and on the fourteenth of April, 1714, the following entry occurs in his diary, referring to Edward Fleetwood, the lord of the manor, and his brother Paul, also Edward Veale, the father of Mrs. Ed. Fleetwood, whom, for some reason unknown, the diarist invariably designated Captain Veale:—"Went to Rosshall. Din^d with the trustys, y^e Lord & his lady, Mr. Paull, and Cap^{tt} Veal. Gave I. Gardiner 1s., and a boy 6d.; soe to ffox Hall."

Paul Fleetwood, the younger brother of the "Lord" died in 1727 and was buried at Kirkham, where some of his descendants still exist in very humble circumstances.

The offspring of Edward Fleetwood consisted only of one child, a daughter, named Margaret, who was born in 1715, and to whom the estates appear to have descended on the decease of her father. On the sixteenth of February, 1733, she married, at Bispham church, Roger Hesketh, of North Meols and Tulketh. Roger Hesketh and his lady resided at Rossall Hall until their respective demises, which happened, the latter in 1752, and the former in 1791. Fleetwood and Sarah Hesketh were the children of their union. On the decease of his father at the ripe age of 81 years, the son and heir, Fleetwood, had already been dead 22 years, and consequently his son, Bold Fleetwood Hesketh, the eldest offspring of his marriage, in 1759, with Frances, the third daughter of Peter Bold, of Bold Hall, in the county of Lancaster, succeeded his grandfather Roger Hesketh. Bold Fleetwood Hesketh, who was born in 1762, died unmarried in 1819, and was buried at Poulton, his younger brother, Robert Hesketh, inheriting the Hall and estates. Robert Hesketh was in his 55th year when he became possessed of the property, and had already been married 29 years to Maria, the daughter of Henry Rawlinson, of Lancaster, by whom he had a numerous family. His four