Mary was die dogter van Richard Wortley en Elizabeth Boughton.
(Pedigrees
recorded at the visitations of the county Palatine of Durham made by William
Flower, Norroy King of Arms in 1575 by Richard St. George, Norroy King of Arms,
in 1815 and by William Dugdale, Norroy King of Arms in 1666 edited by Joseph
Foster Editor of the Yorkshire Visitations 1584-5 and 1612 and of the Middlesex
Visitation 1663-4 Illustrated with
upwards of 150 coats of arms privately printed for Joseph Foster, 21/boundary
road, Finchley road, London, N.W. 1887)
(Bremer, Francis Jl: Building a New Jerusalem, 1894, Yale)
But, like many
old families, the decadence of the Hiltons came at last. Henry Hilton, who
succeeded his father Robert Hilton, 1607-8, and died 1640, seems to have been a
half-witted, melancholy creature, living at Billinghurst, in Sussex, in strict
retirement, having married a daughter of Sir Richard Wortley, and dying at
Mitchell Grove, in the same county of Sussex, 1640. He made a will leaving his
property in trust to the Lord Mayor and four senior aldermen of the city of
London, for certain charitable bequests to parishes in the county of Durham,
orphan children in London, &c., appointing Lady Jane Shelley his executrix,
and desiring to be buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. After twenty years of
litigation a compromise was effected, by which the estates were restored on
condition of the payment of the legacies; but the property had been plundered
and wasted during the civil war, by the armies of Newcastle and Lesley, and the family were
sadly impoverished when at last the inheritance became their own again, and retreated,
without degradation of blood or honours, into the quiet ranks of private
gentry. (Purey-Cust, A.P. (Rev): The
Heraldry of York Minister, a key to the history of its Builders and
Benefactors. As shewn in the
Stained-Glass Windows, and in the Carved Work in Stone. Leeds. 1890. http://archive.org/stream/heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft/heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft_djvu.txt
)
Mary se titel was Baroness Hilton. His widow took for her second husband, Sir William Smith, Knt., an active and intriguing man, of considerable influence during the usurpation. (Burke, John, esq. ed.: The Patrician. Vol. III. London. 1847)
(Lawson, Jane A. (ed): Titled Elizabethans: A Directory of Elizabethan Court, State, and Church Officers, 1558-1603 by Arthur F. Kinney) .
