Westoning, United Kingdom

The manor first left complete royal demesne, with the unfettered right to appoint mesne lords, in 1173 when the King granted the estate worth £15 per year to Roger de Sanford who three years later owed 5 marks for default (of the annual knight's fee) to the King. His executors negotiated a notified Release of it to William de Buckland who paid £100 to effectively be seized of the whole village, save the churchlands; in 1216 his son-in-law, Robert de Ferrar, inherited. His son-in-law was to receive it by a family settlement yet this man named William d'Avrenches died before 1230 and his son before 1235, thus the lands descended to Hamon de Crevecœur via a daughter, followed by his son William and his widow Mabel who later married John Tregoz (before her death in 1297).

Three co-heirs followed, the family of William de Crevecœur's three sisters (Agnes, Isolda and Eleanor). Agnes's share descended to Juliana de Weylondon, the other two-thirds were purchased by 1299 by an acquisitive William Inge. He enhanced his portion of the manor by gaining in 1303 a Royal Licence on his portion to hold a weekly market and annual fair. Five years later Inge acquired the remaining third of the Weston Manor.

Inge was Chief Justice of the King's Bench in the reign of Edward II, and in 1310 received a grant of 100 marks as recompense for wages and horses lost by him in his Scottish war.

By 1371 the lands (and the manorial rights) passed to William la Zouche, son of Joan, daughter and heir of William Inge, Lords of the Manor of Eaton Bray; this line ran both estates until 1525–26 when a later William la Zouche died during the Wars of the Roses.

John Aynell held this manor directly of the King in the mid-fourteenth century. By 1418 it was held by John Shathewell of Priestley and Isabel his wife and in 1480 descended from Thomas Rufford to his son, and then in turn, his son, who in 1541 released all of the rights and land to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. This land in 1543 was described as "a messuage with certain lands called Aynells, on which was a charge of 10s. payable to Westoning Chantry", which had been endowed with land by a prominent lord of the main manor in 1314, William Inge. In 1708 the college paid "An outrent to the king, 10s." The last item represents the 10s. formerly paid to Westoning chantry before its dissolution. The Dissolution of the Chantries took place in 1549, at which time the priest of the chantry in the church was described as 'but meanly [averagely] learned, not able to serve a cure [of souls] and hath no other living but this chantry.'

The rectory of Westoning was transferred by the Crown from the Nunnery at Elstow Abbey to Thomas Hungate and Simon Aynesworth in 1550. Until the beginning of the 19th century the rectory shared the history of Westoning Manor, when Francis Penyston was impropriator of the rectorial tithes (and thus liability) and they passed to his daughter, who held them in 1836 and in 1912 they were vested in the Penyston trustees.

Younges Manor, mostly in Westoning, is recorded for the first time in 1682, when it was held by Henrietta Wentworth, 6th Baroness Wentworth with her manor of Toddington. These lands descended with Toddington up to the beginning of the 19th century but all trace of it is lost after 1803.

At the time of the dissolution, Woburn Abbey held lands in Westoning with an annual value of £2 18s. 2½d., but no further mention of this property has been found.

Mention occurs of a water mill in an extent (survey document of the extent) of Westoning Manor made in 1297, and in 1322 two mills are found attached to the manor. Another extent dated fifty years later again mentions one mill, then worth nothing, and reference is found to it in a document as late as 1615. However no mills were in the parish in 1912.

Henry VIII summoned a later La Zouche as lord of the manor in 1533 to show on what (e.g. annual) service his ancestors held the manor. He proved that the manor was and always had been held of the king by great serjeanty, accordingly paid £4 for relief from the next services due. In 1542 the la Zouche family surrendered the estate to the Crown in exchange for a Royal one in Derbyshire and Henry had it attached to the Royal Honor of Ampthill.

Around 1555 Mary I granted Westoning Manor to Mary Curzon. She married Sir George Fermor, and the manor descended in their family to Sir Hatton Fermor and then Sir William Fermor, colonel of horse for the King in the Civil War. On the restoration his title was restored, afterwards succeeded by his son who represented Northampton and became Baron Leominster, in turn whose son inherited Westoning in 1711 and became Earl of Pomfret or Pontefract in 1722.

In the 17th century Westoning was inhabited by the wandering religious man, and an early Baptist forefather John Bunyan, who wrote The Pilgrim's Progress; he was arrested on 12 November 1660 shortly after the restricted religious rights introduced on the Restoration of the Monarchy for preaching privately in Lower Samsell in the village.