HUNTINGDONSHIRE
FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY

KIMBOLTON, a market town and parish in the hundred of LEIGHTONST0NE, county of HUNTINGDON, 10½ miles (W. by S.) from Huntingdon, and 63 (N.N.W.) from London, containing 1562 inhabitants. The town is pleasantly situated on the verge of the county, amidst sloping hills and woodlands diversified with fertile valleys. There are a few lace-makers, but the general employment of the inhabitants is in agriculture. The market is on Friday; and fairs are held on the Friday in Easter week, for sheep and pedlary, and on the 11th of December, for cattle and hogs. A constable is appointed at the courts leet and baron held under the Duke of Manchester, who is lord of the manor. The living is a vicarage, in the archdeaconry of Huntingdon, and diocese of Lincoln, rated in the king's books at £5, and in the patronage of the Duke of Manchester. The church, dedicated. to St. Andrew, is surmounted by a lofty spire. There are places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Moravians, and Wesleyan Methodists. A grammar school is endowed for a master and an usher; and then is an almshouse for four poor widows. Kimbolton castle, the magnificent residence of the Duke of Manchester, an ancient stone edifice, situated in a spacious park, was the residence of Catherine of Arragon, first wife of Henry VIII., subsequently to her divorce, where she also died. In this parish are the remains of Stonely priory, a convent of canons of the order of St. Augustine, founded by William Mandeville, Earl of Essex, about 1180, and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the revenue of which, at the dissolution, was valued at £62.12.3. Kimbolton gives the inferior title of baron to the Duke of Manchester: it was the birthplace of Lord Kimbolton, afterwards Earl of Manchester, a parliamentary general in the civil war.