Page:History of the Fylde of Lancashire (IA historyoffyldeof00portiala).pdf/185

 elder of whom, Alice, became the wife of Henry Huxley, of Birkenhead, and the younger, Elizabeth, of James Massey, of Strangeways. John Singleton died in 1590, and was in his turn succeeded by the next male representative, his brother George, who had issue by his wife Mary, the daughter of John Houghton, of Penwortham or Pendleton, two sons and a daughter—Thomas, George, and Anne, the wife of Robert Parkinson, of Fairsnape. Thomas Singleton, the heir, became lord of Staining in 1597, previously to which he had espoused Cicely, the daughter of William Gerard, of Ince, and had issue Thomas, John, Mary, Grace, Alice, the last of whom married John Leckonby, of Great Eccleston, and Anne, the wife of Richard Bamber, of the Moor, near Poulton. Thomas Singleton, the eldest son, succeeded to the lordship in the natural course of events, and formed an alliance with Dorothy, the daughter of James Anderton, of Clayton, who was left a widow in 1643, when her husband was slain at Newbury Fight in command of a company of royalists. The offspring of Thomas and Dorothy Singleton were John, born in 1635 and died in 1668, who espoused Jane, the daughter of Edmund Fleetwood, of Rossall; Thomas, who died childless; George; James; Anne, of Bardsea, a spinster, living in 1690; Mary, the wife of John Mayfield; and Dorothy, the wife of Alexander Butler, of Todderstaff Hall. John Singleton, of Staining, whose widow married Thomas Cole, of Beaumont, near Lancaster, justice of the peace, and deputy-lieutanant, had no progeny, and the manor passed, either at once, or after the death of the next brother, Thomas, to George Singleton, who had possession in 1679, but was dead in 1690, never having been married. He held Staining, Hardhorne, Todderstaff, and Carleton manors or estates. The whole of the property descended to John Mayfield, the son and heir of his sister Mary, whose husband, John Mayfield, was dead. John Mayfield, of Staining, etc., ultimately died without issue, and was succeeded by his nephew and heir-at-law, William Blackburn, of Great Eccleston, whose offspring were James, and Gabriel, under age in 1755.

STANLEY OF GREAT ECCLESTON HALL.

The Stanleys, of Great Eccleston, were descended from Henry, the fourth earl of Derby, who was born in 1531, through Thomas Stanley, one of his illegitimate children by Jane Halsall, of