[Illustration] This is a younger and now the only remaining male
branch of the great Lincolnshire family of Willoughby, descended
from Sir Thomas Willoughby, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas
in the reign of Henry VIII., youngest son of Sir Christopher
Willoughby of Eresby, who was sprung from Sir William Willoughby of
Willoughby in Lincolnshire, and lord of that manor in the reign of
Edward I. Wollaton was inherited from the heiress of Willoughby (of
another family) in the thirty-eighth year of Queen Elizabeth.
See Brydges's Collins, vi. 591, vii. 215; and for the
Nottinghamshire family, see Thoroton, p. 221; and for the tombs of
this ancient house, pp. 36, 223, 227; see also Dugdale's
Warwickshire, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 1052.
ARMS.--_Or, fretty azure_. And so borne by Robert de Willoughby in
1300, as appears by the Roll of Carlaverock; but after the death of
Bishop Bek, his maternal uncle, in the 4th of Edward II. he adopted
the coat of Bek, _Gules, a mill-rind argent_. See Nicolas's Roll of
Carlaverock, p, 328.
Willoughby of Wollaton and of Middleton in the county of Warwick
bore, _Or, two bars gules, the upper charged with two waterbougets,
the lower with one waterbouget, argent_.
Present Representative, Henry Willoughby, 8th Baron Middleton.