Sir William Pierrepont

Sir William Pierrepont, who was present at the battle of Stoke, near Newark, in the reign of Henry the Seventh, was made a Knight Banneret in reward for his valour at the sieges of Therounne and Tournay in the time of Henry the Eighth.

Sir William, followed the new money-making fashion of converting his arable lands into pasture for sheep on account of their wool. The enclosure introduced hedges and fields, and, since less labour was required for grazing lands than for tillage, ploughs were "put down" or done away with, and labour was displaced. Some 140 acres of arable land and 80 acres of meadow were so enclosed, and as the inhabitants lost their livelihood they had to quit their homes. In 1517 it was found that six plough teams had been suppressed, dwellers had been "driven forth and cast forth from their holdings," the population had diminished, and six houses which had been abandoned but not demolished were falling into ruin. As each plough was reckoned to employ six labourers and each labourer may have had a family, Holme Pierrepoint suffered a great change in or about 1500. This procedure was then general enough to attract Government attention, and in 1515 the first of a series of Acts was passed to check it and restore the labourers to their work and homes. Little success attended these laws and here they were inoperative: from that time onwards the enclosures remained and amid the wastes and commons around them the fields have persisted.

By his second wife, who was daughter of Sir Richard Empson, he was father of Sir George Pierrepont.