A George I silver waiter, Paul de Lamerie, London, 1724

William Aislabie (1699-1781), and by descent to

Thomas Philip de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey (1781– 1859)

and by descent to the present owner

The arms are those of Aislabie of Studley Royal, North Yorkshire, impaling Cecil for William Aislabie who was born about 1699, the son of John Aislabie (1670-1742) and his first wife, Anne (1670-1701), daughter of Sir William Rawlinson of Hendon. Member of Parliament for Ripon, Yorkshire between 1721 and his death in 1781, he married his first wife, Lady Elizabeth Cecil, daughter of John, 6th Earl of Exeter, at Stamford Baron, Northamptonshire on 7 December 1724. The couple had four children: two sons and two daughters, the youngest of whom, Judith, died an infant a few days after her mother succumbed to smallpox in April 1733.

Aislabie inherited the Studley estate upon the death of his father in 1742 and in 1768 he purchased for £16,009 the neighbouring Fountains Abbey, the restoration of which he is chiefly remembered.

William Aislabie ‘had the felicity of adding to his vast possessions, the magnificent remains of Fountains Abbey – one of the most renowned of those fair structures, which gem the rich valleys of old England; and, it is to his liberality and taste, and that of his descendants, that every man, who has an eye to see and a heart to feel, is indebted for the preservation of that “Noble wreck in ruinous perfection.” The contemplation of the beauties of nature, and rural occupations, formed his chief and unceasing delight.’ (John Richard Walbran, ‘Memorials of the Abbey of St. Mary of Fountains,’ The Publications of the Surtees Society, 1876, vol. LXVII, p. 342)