Pelham family, Earls of Chichester

The Pelham family was settled in East Sussex from the 14th century, and between the 14th and late 16th centuries acquired extensive lands there, including Laughton (where Laughton Place was the principal seat until Halland was built in the 1590s), Waldron, Burwash, Bivelham (in Mayfield) and the rapes of Pevensey and Hastings. Sir Thomas Pelham was created a baronet in 1611. Sir John Pelham, 3rd Bt (d. 1703), married Lucy Sidney, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Leicester. Sir Thomas Pelham, 4th Bt (d. 1712), married in 1686 Lady Grace Holles, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Clare, and was created Baron Pelham in 1706.

The 2nd Baron Pelham (1693-1768) succeeded to the Holles estates of his uncle the Duke of Newcastle in 1711 (see Pelham-Clinton, later Pelham-Clinton-Hope, Dukes of Newcastle), and was himself created Duke of Newcastle in 1715. He divided the Pelham estates in Sussex between himself and his brother Henry Pelham (d. 1754). The properties that passed to Henry Pelham, including Ifield (a former Holles estate), Laughton Place, Burwash and Bivelham, were left to his daughters as co-heirs, and later partitioned and partly sold, but on the death of the Duke of Newcastle in 1768 the remaining Sussex estates in his possession, including Laughton and the rape of Hastings, passed to his cousin and heir male Thomas Pelham of Stanmer (Sussex) (1728-1805).

Thomas Pelham (who also inherited the personal and political papers of the Duke of Newcastle, kept during his lifetime at Claremont (Surrey)) was the grandson of Henry Pelham of Lewes (brother of the 1st Baron Pelham), who had acquired Stanmer c.1716 and built a house there in the 1720s. He and his successors built up an extensive estate in East Sussex, and after 1768 Stanmer continued to be the principal seat, Halland being converted to a farmhouse. Thomas Pelham succeeded the Duke of Newcastle as 2nd Baron Pelham (of the 1762 creation), and was created Earl of Chichester in 1801. In 1804, on the death of Frances Pelham, he inherited the unsold remainder of Henry Pelham’s Sussex properties.

Estates in 1883: Sussex 16,232 acres worth £13,650 a year.