Rothley - History

History

Rothley has been inhabited since Saxon times, evidenced by the ancient Saxon cross in the church graveyard in the village. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book where it is listed as "Rodolei" amongst the lands belonging to the King. The land includes 37 acres (150,000 m2) of meadow, a mill and considerable woodlands. This manor also controlled surrounding pieces of land in a large number of villages including Asfordby, Seagrave and Sileby. Its name may have come from Anglo-Saxon Roþlēah = "meadow in a clearing".

In the Middle Ages, Rothley was home to a manor of the Knights Templar, known as Rothley temple, but now the Rothley Court Hotel, which passed to the Babington family after the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. The Babington family held the manor for almost 300 years until the death in 1837 of Thomas Babington. Married to Jean Macaulay, the daughter of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, Thomas Babington was MP for Leicester from 1800–1818, and a leading Anglican evangelical. Educated at St John's College, Cambridge alongside William Wilberforce, the two worked closely together on social improvement and famously on the Bills to abolish the slave trade.

Wilberforce and Babington spent much time at the Rothley retreat working on the text of the Bills, and on the analysis of the Select Committee's enquiries into the trade. Babington was instrumental in rescuing his wife's young brother, Zachary Macaulay, from the mental trauma of working as an overseer on a Jamaican slave plantation, when Zachary came to recuperate at Rothley Temple. Zachary was restored, and with a new Christian faith, went on to a lifetime devoted to the anti-slavery cause, and to have a posthumous bust in his honour placed in Westminster Abbey. Zachary returned often to Rothley, and on one long visit in 1800 his wife Selina (née Mills) gave birth to poet, historian and Whig politician Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay.

Rothley has close links with its neighbour village, Mountsorrel, which is 2 miles (3.2 km) to the north.