De Rutzen family, Barons of Slebech

Family

De Rutzen family, Barons of Slebech

Slebech was a preceptory or commandery (grange) of the order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem in England. In 1546, following the suppression of the monasteries, Slebech was granted to Roger Barlow and Thomas Barlow, along with the sites and lands of the late priory of Pyll and the late monastery of Haverfordwest. The family failed in the late eighteenth century when Anne Barlow, the heiress, married John Symmons of Llanstinan in 1773, but had no issue. The estate was sold to William Knox of Soho Square, London, who sold the estate in 1792 to Nathaniel Phillips of Gloucester Place, London. Mary Dorothea Phillips, the eventual co-heiress of the estate, married the Baron de Rutzen in 1822. The estate remained in the de Rutzen family until John, baron de Rutzen, was killed in the Second World War, in 1944.