Edward Leigh, 5th Baron Leigh (1742–1786) was descended from Thomas Leigh,

Lord Mayor of London The Lord Mayor of London is the mayor of the City of London and the leader of the City of London Corporation. Within the City, the Lord Mayor is accorded precedence over all individuals except the sovereign and retains various traditional powe ...

in 1558, and inherited the Leigh family seat at

Stoneleigh Abbey Stoneleigh Abbey is an English country house and estate situated south of Coventry. Nearby is the village of Stoneleigh, Warwickshire. The Abbey itself is a Grade I listed building. History In 1154 Henry II granted land in the Forest of Arden t ...

Stoneleigh, Warwickshire Stoneleigh is a small village in Warwickshire, England, on the River Sowe, situated 4.5 miles (7.25 km) south of Coventry and 5.5 miles (9 km) north of Leamington Spa. The population taken at the 2011 census was 3,636. The ...

following the death of his father, Thomas Leigh, 4th Baron Leigh, in 1749. He was Lord of the

Manor of Hunningham Hunningham is a medieval manor located in the West Midlands (region) of Warwickshire, England. Its location is just over three miles northeast of Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. The River Leam – located on Hellidon Hill in Northamptonshire, ...

.Hunningham, in A History of the County of Warwick: Vol. 6, Knightlow Hundred, ed. L F Salzman (London, 1951), pp. 117-120. Leigh spent his early years under the guardianship of his mother's family, the Cravens of

Coombe Abbey Coombe Abbey is a hotel which has been developed from a historic grade I listed building and former country house. It is located at Combe Fields in the Borough of Rugby, roughly midway between Coventry and Brinklow in the countryside of Warwicksh ...

. He attended

Westminster School (God Gives the Increase) , established = Earliest records date from the 14th century, refounded in 1560 , type = Public school Independent day and boarding school , religion = Church of England , head_label = Hea ...

and matriculated as a

gentleman commoner A commoner is a student at certain universities in the British Isles who historically pays for his own tuition and commons, typically contrasted with scholars and exhibitioners, who were given financial emoluments towards their fees. Cambridge ...

Oriel College Oriel College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. Located in Oriel Square, the college has the distinction of being the oldest royal foundation in Oxford (a title formerly claimed by University College, wh ...

in 1761, receiving his MA in 1764. Aged 25, Leigh was elected High Steward of the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and was made a

Doctor of Civil Law Doctor of Civil Law (DCL; la, Legis Civilis Doctor or Juris Civilis Doctor) is a degree offered by some universities, such as the University of Oxford, instead of the more common Doctor of Laws (LLD) degrees. At Oxford, the degree is a higher ...

. At the same time, he was active at Stoneleigh: collecting art, furniture and books, he also made

architectural plan In architecture and building engineering, a floor plan is a technical drawing to scale, showing a view from above, of the relationships between rooms, spaces, traffic patterns, and other physical features at one level of a structure. Dimensio ...

s for the house. In 1766 and 1797 payments are recorded to Bedlam Hospital and John Munro or his son Thomas Munro, the mad-doctors who later attended to

George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...

, and in 1774 an Inquisition of Insanity found that Leigh had been 'a Lunatick of unsound mind' over the previous five years and committed him to the guardianship of his sister, Hon. Mary Leigh, his uncle Reverend John Craven, and his cousin William, Lord Craven at which point he vanished from public view. A prayer written by his sister Mary in about 1775 survives:

O Lord look down from Heaven, in much pity and compassion, upon thy afflicted servant, who is not able to now look up to thee, hear O most merciful Father my Prayers on his behalf, and preserve him from doing any harm to himself or to any other: be pleased to remove all frightfull imaginations far from him, and if it be the blessed will, O our God restore him to his reason and understanding, so will we all give thanks to thee for ever and ever. Amen.

Leigh died unmarried and without heirs in 1786, leaving a complex will that would create legal disputes into the 19th century. Among the provisions, the will gave Leigh's scientific instruments and his library of about 1,000 books to his alma mater, Oriel College. After Leigh's death, his personal papers were deliberately destroyed by John Dodson, a Fellow of Oriel, who had been sent to Stoneleigh to sort Leigh's books. The destruction was sanctioned by Leigh's uncle and sister. The complex will is the basis of research by Australian writer Judy Stove into alleged murders at Stoneleigh Abbey in the decades following Leigh's death, in her book "The Missing Monument Murders."

References

Sources

*Purcell, Mark, A lunatick of unsound mind': Edward, Lord Leigh (1742–86) and the refounding of Oriel College Library'' p. 246-260. ''Bodleian Library Record''. Vol. 17, no. 3-4 (Apr-Oct 2001). {{DEFAULTSORT:Leigh, Edward Leigh, 5th Baron 1742 births 1786 deaths 5 Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford People educated at Westminster School, London People from Warwick District People from the Borough of Rugby