The broad lands of the oldest line of the Willoughbys, as we have seen, passed by distaff to the Earls of Abingdon; the representative of the younger stock, who had summons to Parliament 19th May, 1685, being left the while to support the title with an estate of very modest proportions--the fortune his father had acquired in marriage with a yeoman's daughter. Sir Thomas Willoughby had attained to the ripe old age of 82 when he succeeded to the barony, and he lived to enjoy it for a period of nearly seven years, his death occurring in February, 1691-2. Born in the last year of Elizabeth's golden reign, he had witnessed the accession of James, and lived through the eventful reigns of the Stuart sovereigns. He had passed the meridian of life when Charles was brought to the block; had experienced Republicanism under Cromwell; had seen the restoration of Monarchy in the person of Charles's son; the re-establishment of Episcopacy, and the "Black Bartholomew," as the Dissenters love to designate the day on which the Nonconforming divines, preferring conscience to emolument, withdrew from the Church; and had lived long enough to see the feudal supremacy of the Crown, which had lasted for nearly six hundred years, abolished, when the second James was sent by his betrayed subjects to expiate his offences in exile, and the "bloodless revolution" set the Prince of Orange upon the throne, and paved the way for the succession of the House of Brunswick. Lord Willoughby's wife, Eleanor Whittle, who died in 1665, bore him, with other issue, two sons--Hugh, who succeeded as his heir, and Francis, who married Eleanor Rothwell, of Haigh, and by her had three sons, Thomas, who died unmarried, and Edward and Charles, who, on the death of their uncle, succeeded in turn to the title and estates.