Manners family, Dukes of Rutland

The Manners family was established at Etal (Northumberland) by 1232. In 1469 Sir Robert Manners married Eleanor, sister and co-heir of Edmund, 11th Baron Ros (d. 1508). The Ros family, originating at Roos in Holderness (Yorkshire, East Riding), had inherited Helmsley (Yorkshire, North Riding) in the late 12th century and Belvoir Castle and barony (Leicestershire) in the mid-13th. By the late 15th century the Ros possessions also included land in north Lincolnshire (Wrawby, Melton Ross, etc), Nottinghamshire (Warsop, Orston, etc), Middlesex (Enfield) and Essex (Walthamstow). Sir George Manners (d. 1513) succeeded to the barony of Ros on the death c.1512 of Isabel Lovell, the second co-heir. His son Thomas Manners (c1492-1543) was created Earl of Rutland in 1525.

The 1st Earl acquired numerous monastic properties, including Rievaulx Abbey, near Helmsley, Warter Priory in the East Riding, and Belvoir Priory and Croxton Abbey in north-east Leicestershire. In 1547, however, the Etal estate was alienated; on the death of the 3rd Earl of Rutland in 1587 the East Riding estates passed to his daughter Elizabeth, who in 1589 married William Cecil, later 2nd Earl of Exeter; and on the death of the 6th Earl of Rutland in 1632 most of the Helmsley estate, together with the barony of Ros, passed to his daughter Katherine, widow of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

The north Lincolnshire estate passed on the death of the 7th Earl in 1641 to the Tyrwhit family of Kettleby (Lincolnshire), into which his sister Bridget had married. The Belvoir estates, however, passed to a cousin, John Manners of Haddon (Derbyshire), who succeeded as 8th Earl. His grandfather, Sir John Manners (d. 1611), younger brother of the 2nd Earl, had married Dorothy, daughter and co-heir of Sir George Vernon, through whom he had inherited extensive estates in north Derbyshire and elsewhere.

The 9th Earl was created Duke of Rutland in 1703. In 1717 John Manners, later 3rd Duke, married Bridget (d. 1734), daughter and heir of Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton, but the Kelham (Nottinghamshire) estate of this family descended to younger sons of the marriage, who took the name of Manners-Sutton. The Marquess of Granby (1721-70), eldest son of the 3rd Duke, married in 1750 Lady Frances Seymour, sister of, and co-heir to the paternal (Seymour) estates of, the 7th Duke of Somerset (d. 1750) (see also Percy, Dukes of Northumberland; Wyndham of Orchard Wyndham). Lord Granby was a trustee for the Duke's estates in Wiltshire, Cambridgeshire and elsewhere, and on their partition in the late 1770s his heir (who became 4th Duke of Rutland in 1779) received the Cheveley estate in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and the Marlborough and Trowbridge estates in Wiltshire. The Cheveley estate was retained until 1892, but Marlborough was sold in 1779 (to the Marquess of Ailesbury) and Trowbridge in 1809.

Between the late 17th and the late 19th centuries outlying properties in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire were sold, but the Belvoir and Haddon estates were consolidated. By 1883 the Belvoir estate comprised nearly 35,000 acres, mainly in Leicestershire but including Granby (Nottinghamshire), Bisbrooke (Rutland) and Woolsthorpe and Ropsley (Lincolnshire, both former Belvoir Priory possessions). Both the Belvoir and the Haddon estates were reduced by sales following the First World War.

Estates in 1883: Leics 30,188 acres, Derbys 27,069 acres, Cambs 6,585 acres, Lincs 2,837 acres, Suffolk 1,591 acres, Notts 1,103 acres, Rutland 764 acres, total 70,137 acres worth £97,486 a year.