WILLOUGHBY D'ERESBY was descended from a younger son of the fifth Baron Willoughby, since Richard Hastings, whom Joan, the sister and heiress of the eighth Lord Welles, had married, left no issue. There is a monument in Ashby church near Spilsby, though in a very fragmentary condition, to William and also to Joan and Richard Hastings. William married Katherine of Aragon's maid-of-honour, Lady Mary Salines, for his second wife, and by a will, dated Eresby 1526, desired to be buried and have a monument erected to himself and his wife at Spilsby, but this was never done. The stone screen with its supporting figures of a hermit, a crowned Saracen, and a wild man, erect, set up in 1580, is in memory of his daughter and heiress, Katherine Duchess of Suffolk, and her second husband, Richard Bertie, her first husband being that Charles Brandon who obtained so huge a share of the estates confiscated by Henry VIII. in Lincolnshire. They lived at Grimsthorpe, on the west side of the county, which the king had given to Katherine's parents; and thenceforth that became the chief seat of the Willoughby family, and the series of monuments is continued in Edenham church. But there is one more monument, in what is now called the Willoughby chapel at Spilsby. This is to a son of the duchess, Peregrine Bertie, tenth Baron Willoughby; he died at Berwick in 1601, and was buried at Spilsby as directed in his will; his daughter, Lady Watson, died in 1610, and, as she wished to be buried near her father, Sir Lewis Watson of Rockingham erected a monument to both father and daughter, the latter reclining on her elbow, with the baby, which caused her death, in a little square cot at her feet. Peregrine was so named because he was born abroad, his parents having fled from the Marian persecutions. His wife was the Lady Mary Vere who brought the office of chamberlain into the Willoughby family. It was claimed by her son Robert, the eleventh baron, who in 1630 was made Earl of Lindsey, and thus the barony became merged in the earldom, the fourth earl being subsequently created Duke of Ancaster.
Eresby Manor was burnt down in 1769, and only the moat and garden wall and, at the end of the avenue, one tall brick-and-stone gate-pillar surmounted by a stone vase remain. At the suppression of the college and chantries the Grammar School was founded on the site of the college, just to the north of the church, Robert Latham being the first master, in 1550.
