The history of the manor is extraordinarily complex because the Crown was long reluctant to treat grants of it as freehold. The first beneficiary was the northern baron Geoffrey fitz Pain, who was holding it when King Henry I died in 1135. He held it till 1163 when on his death it was taken back into the king's hand and entrusted to the sheriff of York who accounted for it at the exchequer. In 1177
Hugh du Puiset, bishop of Durham, secured possession of the
regium manerium de Wicthtun from
King Henry II to enhance the estate of the bishop's son Henry. Henry du Puiset held it uncontested until 1204, when the several heirs of Geoffrey fitz Pain of the Trussebut family began a series of lawsuits to recover it as if Geoffrey had held it in fee of the king, which it is unlikely that he did. Nonetheless by 1219 several heirs had secured shares. Until the 14th century Weighton manor was in two halves, one half initially further divided into a third share and a two-third share, each in 1276 owing the service of a single knight's fee. The senior half-share (which included a soke court) was awarded to the eldest daughter of William Trussebut, Rohese, or rather to her son, Robert II de Ros, lord of Helmsley. It stayed in the baronial family of Ros, lords of Helmsley, into the 14th century, when it was reunited with the other shares, which had been allotted to the Fitz Herbert and Daubigny families. Agnes daughter of Robert (III) de Ros married Payn de Tibetot and the manor eventually came to Thomas Broomfleet, Lord Vesci, from whom it passed to the Lords Clifford, who held it with their manor of
Londesborough and the two manors followed the same succession until the modern period. ==Governance==