Margaret Willoughby

Margaret Willoughby born Margaret Freville became Lady Willoughby and Margaret, Lady Bingham (1401 – 1493) was an English heiress and matriarch.

Life Margaret Freville was one of the women who were heiresses in the Freville family when she became the second wife of Hugh Willoughby by 1419. Hugh's first wife Isabel Foljambe had died in 1417 and two of their sons survived. As an heiress Margaret brought to her husband an income of about £200 a year from manors in Herefordshire, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire.

She and Hugh were some of the richest members of the gentry in the English Midlands. In 1429 her husband's career at court gained him a knighthood at the coronation of Henry VI and she became Lady Willoughby. Her family members were skilled in the law. She married Richard Bingham who as a Justice of the King's Bench. Richard lived and died in 1476 in Middleton. whose career flourished despite his part in the abduction of Jane Statham and forcible marriage to his brother Richard, which is considered to have triggered a change to the law in England to make abduction of a property-owning woman a felony.