the time of his birth. He was the third child and eldest
son of his father, who had married in 1783 Miss Ellen
Yates, the eldest daughter of his partner in the firm,
then well known, of Haworth, Peel, and Yates, calico-
printers and cotton-manufacturers of Bury. The family
had long been established in Lancashire, and passed
through many vicissitudes, sinking ultimately to the
rank of yeomen, though its origin has been traced
through the Peeles of the Peele in Bolton by Bolland,
a parish in the West Riding, and their lineal ancestors
the Boltons, Lords of Bolton, to Turchil, son of Ligulf,
one of the principal lieutenants of Sweyn and Canute.
Robert Peele of Blackburn, who died in 1577, is the
first of whom we hear in connection with Hole or Hoyle
House, near Blackburn, where the statesman's ancestors
lived as yeomen for several generations. His great
grandson, another Robert Peele, who is said to have
been a woollen manufacturer, and certainly raised the
fortunes of his family, purchased from a kinsman named
Oldham a property near Blackburn, known indifferently
as Oswaldtwistle or Oldham's Cross, and gave it the name
of Peele or Peel Fold, though it still continued to be
called the Cross in legal documents, and this property
passed successively to his son William and his grand-
son Robert, who was the father of the first baronet
and the grandfather of the statesman. ¹ This Robert

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