William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby

Who was William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby?

William Willoughby, 11th Baron Willoughby de Eresby, was an English baron and the largest landowner in Lincolnshire. He was the son of Sir Christopher Willoughby and Margaret or Marjery Jenney.

In 1499, he succeeded as Baron Willoughby de Eresby.

He married first Mary Hussey, youngest child of Sir William Hussey, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench.

Secondly, on 5 June 1516, he married María de Salinas, the Spanish-born lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon. By his second wife, Willoughby had a daughter, Catherine, who succeeded him in the barony on his death in 1526. She was betrothed to Henry Brandon, 1st Earl of Lincoln, the son of Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, and Princess Mary, the sister of Henry VIII. When Princess Mary died in 1533, fourteen year-old Catherine was hastily married to the Duke of Suffolk, her fiance's father, who was twenty-five years her senior. In 1546, there were rumours that Henry VIII wished to marry the widowed Catherine.