James Gairdner and John Horace Round

“ His first wife Maud, a granddaughter of Thomas, Lord Furnival, brought him the castle of Sheffield as part of her inheritance, and he was accordingly summoned to parliament in the days of Henry IV. as John Talbot of Hallamshire, otherwise Lord Furnival, more than thirty years before he was made earl of Shrewsbury. The property became a favourite residence of the family during the Tudor era; and, but for the death in 1616 of Gilbert, 7th earl of Shrewsbury, without male issue, Sheffield might have remained much longer a centre of feudal magnificence rather than of commerce and manufactures. ”

“ John, the second earl of Shrewsbury, was the 1st earl’s son by his first wife. He had been knighted at Leicester in 1426 along with the infant king Henry VI., had served in the wars of France, and been made chancellor of Ireland during his father’s lifetime, when he was only Lord Talbot. Afterwards he was made lord high treasurer of England, and in 1459 was rewarded for his services to the house of Lancaster with a grant of 100 marks a year out of the lordship of Wakefield, forfeited by Richard, duke of York. ”

“ Two sons of this last earl succeeded one another, and the title then devolved, for want of male issue, on the lineal descendants of Sir Gilbert Talbot of Grafton in Worcestershire, third son of John, the 2nd earl. But the old baronies of Talbot, Strange of Blackmere, and Furnival had passed away in 1616 to the daughters of the 7th earl, of whom the youngest married Thomas (Howard) earl of Arundel, whose descendant, the duke of Norfolk, has the valuable Furnival estates. ”