[Illustration] The Leightons are stated to have been seated at
Leighton in this county prior to the Conquest: Domesday has "Rainald
(vicecom') ten' _Lestone_; Leuui tenuit temp. Reg. Edw." Hence there
can be no doubt the name Lestone, _i.e._ Lewi's-town, now Leighton,
was derived. Certain it is that the direct ancestors of the family
of Leighton were resident there at the very commencement of the
twelfth century. From Rainald the sheriff, who was the superior lord
of Leighton when Domesday was compiled, that and all his other
manors passed in marriage with his daughter to Alan, the ancestor of
the Fitz-Alan family; and in the _Liber Niger_, under the year 1167,
Richard son of Tiel (Tihel) is stated to hold Leighton under William
Fitz-Alan by the service of one knight. This Richard was the
undoubted ancestor of this ancient family. Leighton is now severed
from the inheritance of the male line of the Leightons, belonging to
Robert Gardner, Esq., whose wife was the heiress of the Kinnersleys,
descended in the female line from the second marriage of Sir Thomas
Leighton, knighted in 1513. Church Stretton, acquired by the heiress
of Cambray in the fifteenth century, was for four generations the
family seat. Loton (an ancient Corbet estate) was acquired by
marriage with a coheiress of Burgh, by John Leighton, Sheriff of
Shropshire in 1468.
See Eyton's Shropshire, vii. p. 325; Wotton's Baronetage, iv. 38;
Blakeway, pp. 74, 75, 80, 91; Stemmata Botvilliana, 1858; and Morris
MSS.
ARMS.--_Quarterly per fess indented or and gules_. In 1315, Sir
Richard de Leighton bore the present coat differenced by a bendlet,
as appears by his seal attached to a deed still preserved at Loton:
the same arms are on his monument, formerly in Buildwas Abbey, and
now in Leighton church.
Present Representative, Sir Baldwin Leighton, 7th Baronet, late M.P.
for South Salop.