Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/257

 s. VIIL SEPT. 2i, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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descent of property by "gavelkind" pre- vails. The intending buyer and seller meet the rector and churchwardens in the vestry of the parish church. The ceremony is under- stood to be simply this. It may be pre- mised that the multitude of properties in the gavelkind isle are, of course, numbered in the tithe map. A., the seller, says, " I, A., sell to you, B, the land No. 75 (say)." B. says, " I, B., buy the land No. 75 of you, A., for 120/. (say)." He pays the money, the transaction is registered, and the sale is legally complete.

H. J. MOULE. Dorchester.

ARMORIAL : LEIGHTON FAMILY (9 th S. v. 355 ; viii. 149). In connexion with the descent of this family it may be well to point out an error that has obtained currency in most of the ordinarily received pedigrees.

Thomas Leighton, said to be son and heir apparent of Sir Thomas Leighton, Governor of Jersey, married at Han bury Church, co. Worcester, on 4 March, 1603, Mary, younger daughter and coheiress of Edward, eleventh Baron Zouche of Har- ringworth, through which marriage his descendants became coheirs to that barony and to that of St. Maur. In most accounts of the Leighton family including that in Botfield's 'Stemmata Botevilliana,' the best Leighton pedigree in print this Thomas Leighton is said to have died s.p. Sir Harris Nicolas in his 'Synopsis' (vol. ii. p. 711) in a note observes that no issue of Thomas Leighton and Mary could be traced after the time of the Commonwealth. And this sup- position of the extinction of the line of the junior coheir not improbably had some effect in leading to the termination of the abeyance of the barony of Zouche in 1815 in favour of Sir Cecil Bishopp, the senior coheir.

There is, however, ample evidence that the Leighton-Zouche coheirs were not ex- tinguished at the Commonwealth, nor is it by any means certain that they have failed since. The Leighton pedigree given in Nichols's 'History of Leicester' (vol. iii. part ii. p. 1146) names no fewer than four sons to Thomas Leighton and the Zouche coheiress, all baptized at Hanbury between 1608 and 1611. These were (1) Edward, who succeeded his father at Hanbury Hall in 1617, and was living in 1666, having married a Mary Stanley, by whom he had surviving two sons and three daughters, baptized between 1627 and 1638 ; (2) Thomas, of whom nothing is recorded, but who is thought to be ancestor of the Leightons of Durham ; (3) Sir William ; (4) Charles, who matriculated at Trinity

Hall, Oxford, 23 January, 1628/9, at the age of seventeen, as " son of Thomas Leighton, of Feckenham, co. Worcester, gent."

This corrected Leighton pedigree in Nichols explains a somewhat obscure reference in the 'Diet. Nat. Biog.' In the article upon Sir William Leighton, of Plash, poet and author, M.P. for Wenlock in 1601, knighted 23 July, 1603, it is stated that he was living in 1614, " but must have been then an elderly man, so cannot be identical with the Sir William Leighton who was confined in the Tower in 1658/9." Unless a candidate for centen- arianism, he certainly could not, the poet's father, William Leighton, of Plash, having died in 1607, after holding the office of Chief Justice of N. Wales for forty years. The Sir William Leighton who was confined in the Tower in 1659 was the third son of Thomas Leighton, of Hanbury, and the Zouche co- heiress. He was baptized at Hanbury in 1610, and knighted at Hereford 5 September, 1645, as " Col. Sir William Layton," being then (see Symonds's 'Diary') lieutenant-colonel of the King's Life Guards of Foot. He was created D.C.L. of Oxford in 1645. The name of his wife appears to be unknown, but according to Nichols he had a son Charles, who died in infancy in 1658, and a daughter Elizabeth, baptized at Hanbury 15 December, 1655. What became of Sir William Leighton after his release from the Tower does not seem to be known.

The Hanbury Hall estate was sold by Edward Leighton between 1658 and 1666 to Edward Vernon, and the further history of this line of the Leightons in whom, prior to 1815, vested the coheirship to the barony of Zouche, and still vests the coheirship to that of St. Maur has yet to be discovered. In T. C. Banks's ' Baronia Anglia Concentrata ' (i. 471) the author claims to descend from this line, stating that in 1825 he presented a petition to the king for the barony of St. Maur, as being unaffected by the deter- mination of the abeyance of Zouche ; that his petition was referred to the then Attorney- general, Sir John Copley, but that owing to disappointment in succeeding to some estate le was unable further to proceed with the claim. Could this petition be traced some ight might be cast upon this branch of the Leightons.

Though not free from doubt, I am inclined to the opinion that the first Thomas Leighton, of Hanbury the husband of the Zouche co- leiress was either son or grand son of the well- snown Sir Thomas Leighton, of Feckenham, Governor of Jersey, referred to by your correspondent MR. H. R. LEIGHTON. The