Robert de Pierrepoint

Although the family of Pierrepoint did not attain the honours of the Peerage until a period of comparatively recent date, yet were they persons of distinction ever since the Conquest. In which eventful era, Robert de Pierrepoint was of the retinue of William, Earl of Warren, and at the time of the General Survey, held lands in Suffolk and Sussex amounting to ten knights' fees, under that nobleman. The great grandson of this Robert, another Robert de Pierrepoint, was a person of such extensive property, that, being made a prisoner fighting on the side of King Henry III. at the battle of Lewes, he was forced to give security for the payment of the then great sum of seven hundred marks for his ransom. He was, however, relieved from the obligation by the subsequent victory of the royalists at Evesham. He was succeeded. by his son, Sir Henry de Pierrepoint, a person of great note at the period in which he lived. In the 8th of Edward I., Sir Henry having lost his Seal, came into the Court of Chancery, then sitting at Lincoln, upon Monday, the morrow of the Octave of St. Michael, and made publication thereof; protesting, that if any one should find it, and seal therewith after that day, that the instrument sealed ought not to be of any validity. He married Annora, daughter of Michael, and sister and heir of Lionel de Manners, whereby be acquired an extensive property in the county of Nottingham, with the Lordship of Holme, now called Holme-Pierrepoint.

His direct descendant, Robert Pierrepoint, was advanced to the Peerage, by King Charles I., as Baron Pierrepoint, of Holme, Pierrepoint, in the county of Nottingham, and Viscount Newark, by letters patent, dated 29th June, 1627, and the next year was created Earl or Kingston-upon-Hull.

At the breaking out of the Civil War his Lordship was one of the first and most zealous to espouse the royal cause, and he is said to have brought no less than four thousand men immediately to the standard of the King. He was soon after constituted Lieutenant-general of His Majesty's Forces in the counties of Lincoln, Rutland, Huntingdon, Cambridge and Norfolk; and was amongst the most popular of the Cavalier commanders. His Lordship became, therefore, an object of more than ordinary watchfulness to the Parliamentarians, and was at length surprised and made prisoner by Lord Willoughby, of Parham, at Gainsborough, whence he was despatched in an open boat towards Hull.

The last male representative of this distinguished race, Evelyn Pierrepoint, second Duke of Kingston (whose wife was the notorious Duchess of that name), died in 1773, when his estates devolved on his nephew, Charles Medows, Esq., afterwards created Earl Manvers. --(This name appears on the Battle Abbey Roll).