John Ferneley, Snr. 1782-1860

William Thomas Massey-Stanley was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Massy-Stanley, 9th Bt. (1782-1841) of Hooton Hall, Cheshire, and his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Carnaby Haggerston. The Stanleys were an old Cheshire family and acquired the estate of Hooton in the early fifteenth century. The family added the name Massey in the early eighteenth century, when William's great grandfather inherited the Puddington estate from his godfather William Massey.

William Massey Stanley was M.P. for Pontefract from 1837 to 1841 and Sheriff of Cheshire in 1845. He succeeded his father as tenth baronet in 1841. He was a keen hunting man, a member of the New Club at Melton and member of the Melton Hunt. In Ferneley's famous picture 'The Melton Breakfast' (illustrated in Paget, op.cit, facing p. 22) he is shown on the extreme left. Both William and his father were keen patrons of Ferneley. A picture by Ferneley, also dated 1833, showing William Massey Stanley driving his cabriolet in Hyde Park is in the Paul Mellon Collection. An extravagant figure, Massey Stanley was forced to sell his Hooton and Storeton estates to Christopher Naylor in about 1850. He died unmarried in Paris.