daughter of William Thompson, gent., of Little Eccleston, but dying without offspring, was succeeded by his brother Richard, who had espoused Ann, the daughter of William Hesketh, of Mains Hall. The children of Richard Leckonby, of Leckonby House, were William; Richard, who was born in 1696, and afterwards became a Romish missionary; and Thomas, also a missionary, who died at Maryland in 1734. William Leckonby, the eldest son, occupied Leckonby House, after the decease of his father, as holder of the hereditary estates. He espoused Anne, the daughter of Thomas Hothersall, of Hothersall Hall, and sister and co-*heiress of John Hothersall, and had issue—Richard; Thomas, born in 1717, who entered the Order of Jesus; William, of Elswick, who died in 1784; Anne, born in 1706; Bridget; and Mary, who became the wife of Thomas Singleton, of Barnacre-*with-Bonds, gent. Richard Leckonby, who succeeded his father in 1728, inherited, in addition to the lands in Great Eccleston and Elswick, the extensive manor of Hothersall, and by his marriage with Mary, the daughter of William Hawthornthwaite, of Catshaw, gent., came into possession, on the death of her brother John Hawthornthwaite in 1760, of Catshaw, Lower Wyersdale, Hale, Luddocks, and Stockenbridge. Notwithstanding these large accessions to the original family domain, Richard Leckonby managed, by a long career of dissipation and extravagance, to run through his resources, mortgaging his estates, and bringing himself and his family to comparative poverty. He died in 1783, at about 68 years of age, having survived his wife many years, and was buried at St. Michael's-on-Wyre. His offspring were two sons, the elder of whom was thrown from a pony and killed in early youth; whilst the second, William, met with a fatal accident when hunting in Wyersdale the year before the death of his father. William Leckonby, left, at his untimely death, by his wife, Elizabeth, the daughter of James Taylor, of Goosnargh, gent., two sons and a daughter. Of these children, Richard, the eldest, died in 1795, when only sixteen years of age; James, the second son, died in infancy; and Mary, their sister, married in 1799, at the age of twenty-two years, Thomas Henry Hale Phipps, of Leighton House, Wiltshire, a justice of the peace and deputy-lieutenant of his county, by which union, Leckonby of Leckonby House, became a title of the past.
