Richard de Towneley (MP)
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Richard de Towneley, also known as Richard de la Legh, (c. 1313 – 16 April 1381) was an English landowner and politician.[1][2] He was an early member of the Towneley family of Towneley Hall in Burnley.[1][2]
The land at Towneley was enclosed by the Deans of Whalley around 1200 as a hunting park.[3] Previously, it had been common pasture land used by the people of Burnley.[3] The land passed through the family to successive Deans of Whalley until the last male descendants died, some time before 1295.[4][3] One of these descendants was named Richard. (Not Richard, the subject of this article.) His widow, Cecilia de Thonlay, then became heiress to the Towneley estates. One of her three daughters (also named Cecilia) married John de la Legh, son of Gilbert de la Legh.[3] Around 1304, the elder Cecilia gave John de la Legh the land she held at Towneley.[3][5] John’s second son Richard took de Towneley as his surname, apparently as part of his inheritance of the estate. Another source states that John de la Legh was Richard's grandfather, rather than his father.[1]
Richard de Towneley married a woman named Helen or Ellen, who was living in 1345.[2] He appears to have had three sons and one daughter.[2] The eldest son, John, was born in about 1350 (as he was 31 at the time of Richard's death).[2][5] In 1351, Richard rented the manor of St. Saviour, at Stydd, near Ribchester, and it is likely that he no longer lived at Towneley after this date.[4] Richard de Towneley died on 16 April 1381.[5]
John was married to Isabel Rixton, daughter of neighboring landowner William Rixton. John and Isabel had a son, Richard, who inherited Towneley hall upon John's death in 1410, and a daughter, Matilda, who married William Fleming.[2] Whitaker's original statement,[6] picked up by Burke,[2] that John married a second wife called Elizabeth Nagier was a mistake based on a misunderstanding of the French nagueres, meaning 'formerly' as Langton pointed out.[7] Isabella and Elizabeth[a] were alternate versions of the same name. The Inquisition post mortem of 1401 refers to Isabella nee Rixton.[7]