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Biography of Francis Willoughby (1588-1665)

Francis was the eldest son of Sir Percival Willoughby and his wife Bridget. Francis was brought up initially at Middleton in Warwickshire, but from 1599 principally at Wollaton Hall. He was educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1607, and entered Lincoln's Inn in 1609. He returned to live at Middleton with his family from 1615. He succeeded his father in 1643, but never lived at Wollaton Hall, which had been badly damaged by fire in 1642.

Family

He married Lady Cassandra Ridgeway (d 1675), daughter of Thomas, Earl of Londonderry, in 1610, and had:

• Francis, known as Francis Willughby, F.R.S. (1635-1672)
• Katherine (1630-1694) m in 1668 Clement Winstanley of Braunston, Leicestershire (d 1672)
• Lettice (d 1696), m Sir Thomas Wendy (1613-1673), of Haslingfield, Cambridgeshire

Archive Collections

• Title deeds, settlements, estate and legal papers relating to Francis Willoughby's ownership of the Willoughby estates are part of the Middleton Collection held in Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham.

Published Sources

Correspondence and details relating to Sir Francis Willoughby are contained within Cassandra Willoughby's two-volume history of the Willoughby family, part of the Middleton Collection held at Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham (reference Mi LM 26-27), and published as :

• Chandos, Cassandra, Duchess of, History of the Willoughby Family . Published in Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Report to the Commissioners on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire (1911) [King's Meadow Campus East Midlands Collection Em. D2 HIS]
• Chandos, Cassandra, Duchess of (ed. Wood, A.C.), The Continuation of the History of the Willoughby Family (The University of Nottingham, 1958) [King’s Meadow Campus East Midlands Collection Not 4H.V38 WIL]
• More recent edition of Chandos, Cassandra, History of the Willoughby Family: Jo Ann Moran Cruz (ed), An Account of an Elizabethan Family: The Willoughbys of Wollaton by Cassandra Willoughby, 1670-1735 (Cambridge University Press, 2019)