Conclusion

Summary

When John Leland's perambulations in the 1530s and 1540s brought him to Leicestershire, one of the first villages he visited was Stonton Wyville. In the fifteenth century, the manor had belonged to the Wyvyll family, but in Leland's day it was held by Mr Brudenell. As Leland travelled deeper into the county he alluded to some of the old, familiar fifteenth-century families. Skeffingtons were still to be found at Skeffington and Hasilrigges continued to reside at Noseley. The Belgraves of Belgrave, whose income had been £13 per year in 1436, were doing sufficiently well for Leland to remark favourably on their income of £50 per year. But there were also other changes besides that at Stonton Wyville. At Peckleton, where Motons had lived since the twelfth century, there were now Vincents. New names emerge, too, from among the shire's parliamentary representatives in the first half of the sixteenth century, Sacheverell, Manners and Cave.

There is nothing particularly startling in these changes or in the way they had occurred. Margaret, widow of William Wyvyll, had been forced to sell the reversion of the manor of Stonton Wyville to Robert Brudenell, whom she later married, in order to raise money to execute her first husband's will. The Motons had died out in the male line with the death of Edward Moton in 1511 and their manors devolved to the descendants of those granddaughters whom Sir Robert Moton had tried to disinherit back in the 1440s.