[Illustration] The Leightons are stated to have been seated at Leighton in this county prior to the Conquest: Domesday has "Rainald (vicecom') ten' _Lestone_; Leuui tenuit temp. Reg. Edw." Hence there can be no doubt the name Lestone, _i.e._ Lewi's-town, now Leighton, was derived. Certain it is that the direct ancestors of the family of Leighton were resident there at the very commencement of the twelfth century. From Rainald the sheriff, who was the superior lord of Leighton when Domesday was compiled, that and all his other manors passed in marriage with his daughter to Alan, the ancestor of the Fitz-Alan family; and in the _Liber Niger_, under the year 1167, Richard son of Tiel (Tihel) is stated to hold Leighton under William Fitz-Alan by the service of one knight. This Richard was the undoubted ancestor of this ancient family. Leighton is now severed from the inheritance of the male line of the Leightons, belonging to Robert Gardner, Esq., whose wife was the heiress of the Kinnersleys, descended in the female line from the second marriage of Sir Thomas Leighton, knighted in 1513. Church Stretton, acquired by the heiress of Cambray in the fifteenth century, was for four generations the family seat. Loton (an ancient Corbet estate) was acquired by marriage with a coheiress of Burgh, by John Leighton, Sheriff of Shropshire in 1468. See Eyton's Shropshire, vii. p. 325; Wotton's Baronetage, iv. 38; Blakeway, pp. 74, 75, 80, 91; Stemmata Botvilliana, 1858; and Morris MSS. ARMS.--_Quarterly per fess indented or and gules_. In 1315, Sir Richard de Leighton bore the present coat differenced by a bendlet, as appears by his seal attached to a deed still preserved at Loton: the same arms are on his monument, formerly in Buildwas Abbey, and now in Leighton church. Present Representative, Sir Baldwin Leighton, 7th Baronet, late M.P. for South Salop. SANDFORD OF SANDFORD. [Illustration] A family of acknowledged antiquity, whose ancestor Richard de Sanford was certainly seated at Sandford soon after the Conquest, and which has ever since remained their principal seat; it is in the parish of Prees, and is mentioned by Leland in his Itinerary. The Herald of the eighteenth century, and the late excellent Bishop of Edinburgh, were both of this family. Younger Branch. Sandford of the Isle House near Shrewsbury, parted from the parent stem in the fifteenth century, and who also by marriage represent the ancient Shropshire families of Sprenghose and Winsbury. See Eyton's Shropshire, ix. p. 221; and Blakeway, pp. 54, 190, 222. ARMS.--_Quarterly per fess indented azure and ermine_. The Sandfords of the Isle bear, _Party per chevron sable and ermine, in chief two boar's heads couped close or_. Present Representative, Thomas Hugh Sandford, Esq. KYNASTON OF HARDWICKE, BARONET 1818.