In 1485, all the land in the Desford and Peckleton area was wholly controlled by Lancastrian nobility. This left the people of these communities with little doubt that they owed their allegiance to the Lancastrian cause during the Wars of the Roses. On August 22, 1485, these wars came to an end on the Bosworth battlefield, approximately 7 miles from Desford. The death of King Richard III in the battle and the victory of the nominal Lancastrian leader Henry VII heralded the beginning of the Tudor Dynasty in England.
The documented history of my Gregory family begins 74 years later, on February 11, 1559, at St. Martin’s Church in Desford, Leicestershire. Rychard Gregorye’s marriage to Margaret Stringer (below) is the sixth entry in the surviving Desford Parish Register (DPR), which commenced that year. See below.
