Leigh led the coronation procession of Elizabeth I
Leigh was raised by Sir Rowland Hill, a City mercer and wool merchant, and later joined Sir Rowland's business, and circa 1535, he married his niece and heir, Alice Barker,[2] daughter of John Barker and Elizabeth née Hill.
In 1561, Sir Rowland Hill purchased Stoneleigh Abbey after the Dissolution of the Monasteries for his ward Sir Thomas Leigh, and a mansion was built on the site of the former monastic buildings. Leigh's family and descendants were seated on the estate from 1561 to 1993.[citation needed]
Sir Thomas Leigh's descendants include Jane Austen through her mother Cassandra Leigh, the Leigh baronets and the Barons Leigh of Stoneleigh, the Earls of Chichester and the Duchess of Dudley.
One of his daughters, Winifred Leigh, married a later Lord Mayor of London, George Bond.[8]
^Burke, John; Burke, Sir Bernard. A genealogical and heraldic history of the extinct and dormant baronetcies of England, Ireland and Scotland. 1841, p. 307. London, Scott, Webster and Geary.
^Burke, John (1831), A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland, and Scotland, extinct, dormant, and in abeyance. England, Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley, p. 310
^Stow, John; Thomas, William John; Morley, Henry (1876), A survey of London written in the year 1598, Chatto & Windus, p. 195
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