HANDFORTH HALL--THE BRERETONS--SIR WILLIAM BRERETON.
The stranger who perchance for the first time finds himself a
worshipper within the ancient church of Cheadle, in Cheshire, may
haply have his mind diverted from his devotions by the sight of a
curiously-wrought oaken screen which separates an old chantry chapel,
at the east end of the aisle, on the south side, from the remaining
portions of the church. It is an interesting relic of bygone days,
black with age, and carved with many a quaint device, and, withal, of
such excellent design and workmanship as to prove that our forefathers
were by no means deficient in the higher graces of architecture; the
cornice is battered and broken in places, but upon it you may still
trace a running figure representing the stem and foliage of the briar,
with the figure of a cask or tun, and the letters V and B frequently
repeated. In the east window are some fragments of heraldic glass
commemorating one of the heroes of Flodden Field, and within the
enclosure, placed side by side, is a group of altar tombs of more than
passing interest; upon them are the recumbent figures of knights armed
cap-à-pie, each with his hands uplifted and conjoined upon his breast
as if in supplication. Two of them are of alabaster and of ancient
date; whatever there may have been of armorial insignia among their
decorations has long since disappeared, but a collar of SS round the
neck of each denotes the rank of Esquire of the Body of the Sovereign,
and the character of the armour in which they are encased shows that
they must have played their parts in the time of that long and bloody
struggle between the adherents of the rival Roses which terminated on
the Field of Bosworth when the sun of the Plantagenets went down and
the flower of English chivalry was destroyed.
Those days of ruin
When York and Lancaster drew forth the battles,
When, like a matron butchered by her sons,
And cast beside some common way, a spectacle
Of horror and affright to passers by,
Our groaning country bled at every pore.
The third of these sepulchral memorials, the only one that bears an
inscription, is of stone, and perpetuates the name of the last scion
of an illustrious house. The verger, if encouraged, will recount, with
delight, the valorous deeds of--
The ancient knights whose sculptured glories
The aisle adorn
and tell you that the grim warriors graven in stone represent some of
the earlier lords of Handforth, one of the manors within the parish;
that this old chantry was their burial place; and that the letters
with the briar and the tun that have attracted your attention are the
initials and the punning rebus of Sir Urian Brereton, who, in the reign
of Henry the Eighth, of pious memory, acquired the Handforth estate
by his marriage with the heiress of that name; "buylded" or rather
rebuilt the "haulle" there, and erected the curious piece of carpentry
in Cheadle Church for the greater sanctity of the place where repose
the remains of his wife's progenitors. Within that little enclosure the
gathered ashes of long centuries rest; there many a warlike Honford and
many a valorous Brereton sleep in peace; but tabard and helm, sword and
buckler, have disappeared, and scarce a relic remains to remind us of
their daring and their prowess, or even to perpetuate their names, for--
Monuments themselves memorials need.
The frail carving on the screen commemorates the first of the
Breretons, who resided at Handforth, and the name of the last of
them is written upon one of the altar-tombs, but of that Sir William
Brereton whose name figures so prominently in Cheshire history, and who
played so conspicuous a part in the great struggle between King and
Parliament that preceded the Commonwealth, not a single memento has
been preserved. The church registers thus record his death:--
1661. Sir William Brereton, Barronet, died at Croyden ye 7th of April.
This, and nothing more. He died at the Archiepiscopal Palace, which had
been granted to him by the Parliament after the execution of Laud, and
where he resided during the Protectorate, and his body was sent down
into Cheshire for interment in the sanctuary that canopies the bones
of so many of his ancestors. Did he find a resting-place there? Old
gossips shake their heads mysteriously when you inquire, and relate
the strange legend that has shaped itself in the popular mind, and
which, through the medium of oral tradition, has floated down through
the long avenues of time--how that fate, which had permitted the stern
Republican to see the King "enjoy his own again," willed that his body
should not, after death, find a resting-place in the church which,
in life, he had despoiled; that when those who accompanied the body
from London were approaching the village of Cheadle a fearful storm
arose in the night; trees were blown down, houses were unroofed, the
rain descended in torrents, and the rivers were flooded, so much so
that when they came to ford one of them the coffin, with its lifeless
occupant, was swept away by the surging current, and never seen again.
Such is the legend that has been handed down through successive
generations, but which, in this unromantic age, is fast fading from
the memory of the inhabitants. For its trustworthiness we fear we can
ascribe no higher authority than--
Tradition's dubious light,
That hovers 'twixt the day and night,
Dazzling, alternately, and dim--
It belongs, we suspect, to that native spirit of romance that gilds to
its own satisfaction, and without which the world with all its natural
delights would be but a dull reality. Certain it is, that there has
not been preserved a single memento of Cheshire's greatest Puritan
soldier--the captor of her Cathedral City, and the despoiler of the
stronghold of Beeston.
Any particular description of these tombs, or of the individuals whose
dust they enshrine, we will defer until after our visit to the ancient
and somewhat dilapidated mansion in which their occupants lived and had
their being.
From Cheadle the old Hall is distant a good three miles, but from the
railway station at Handforth it is only a few minutes' walk. It was
a cold December morning when we started upon our quest; the sunshine
and the warmth of summer had passed away, winter was upon us, and the
year was fast hastening to its close. There was a stillness in the
atmosphere and a dull leaden light in the sky that betokened a fall;
the meadows far and near were covered with a thin coating of crisp
white snow that gathered in heaps about the twisted roots of the trees,
and through the haze we could see the umbraged heights of Alderley Edge
looming spectral-like, while the hills, forming the eastern boundary
of the county, were thickly covered with a fleecy mantle of Nature's
weaving; the little pools and runnels by the wayside were congealed,
the ice-gems decked the branches of the trees, making them look like so
many fairy fountains, and the hoar-frost glittered on every plant and
shrub. There were not many signs of human life about; some sheep were
vainly endeavouring to find pasturage, and a few stirks stood gazing
vacantly in the meadow, their breath visible in the frosty air. As we
strode along the sound of our steps reverberated from the hard and
frost-bound road, the crisp brown autumn leaves crackled beneath our
feet, and the keen air drove the blood from the surface of the skin and
sent it back into the heart like freezing water.
Handforth, or Handforth-cum-Bosden, as it is officially called--the
manor of Handforth with that of Bosden forming a joint township
in the parish of Cheadle--is still only an inconsiderable village,
though in its outward aspect it has changed materially since the time
when, in 1534-5, Sir William Brereton, then a young man of thirty or
thereabouts, recorded his adventures in other lands and made favourable
comparisons between his native place and those he visited. Thus,
complaining of the scanty provision he had to put up with after a forty
miles' ride in Ayrshire, he says: "The entertainment we accepted, in a
poorer house than any upon Handforth Green, was Tharck-cake (_i.e._,
oatcakes), two eggs, and some dried fish buttered;"[23] in Ireland he
fared no better, for at Carrick, he says, "Here, in this town, is the
poorest tavern I ever saw; a little, low, thatched Irish house, not
to be compared unto Jane Kelsall's, of the Green, at Handforth."[24]
Of poor Jane Kelsall and her humble hostelry, in which, possibly, the
lord of Handford, before he went a "colonelling," may have occasionally
enjoyed his cup of sack, not even a memory has been preserved, and
the village green is now only so called by courtesy, for the railway
traverses a part, and what remains has been enclosed, though the name
lingers in a meadow which is still known as the "Green" field.
From the railway station a pleasant rural lane that crosses the line
descends into a little valley, at the bottom of which a tiny rindle
hurries on to add its tributary waters to the river Dean; crossing this
the road ascends and presently brings us in front of the old mansion,
a quaint half-timbered structure with black beams and a diaper-like
pattern traced in places upon the white ground of intervening plaster,
and built after the fashion of so many of the Cheshire houses with
projecting gables and overhanging chambers. Approaching more nearly we
note that much of the old timber work has been removed and replaced
with brick painted in imitation of the original oaken framework to
deceive the eye of the casual observer; the old mullioned windows, too,
have disappeared, and their place has been supplied with others of
later date, though of a considerable age, as evidenced by the small
latticed panes. Ormerod says the building was originally quadrangular
in plan; though there is nothing to indicate that such was the case
there can be no doubt it has been shorn of its former proud and
graceful proportions; its palmy state belongs to other days, but there
is, nevertheless, much left to show what it has been, with the added
interest that the halo of antiquity and romance throws around it. The
portion that remains has for many years been used as a farmhouse, and
the occupants, as may be supposed, have attached but small import to
the interest it derives from old associations--alterations have been
made to adapt it to its present purposes, and repairs that have been
effected have not always been done in the most judicious manner or in
the best taste. It is an oblong structure with two gables projecting
from the principal front, one of them forming the porch or main
entrance, and this constitutes one of the principal features of the
exterior. The sideposts and the lintel of the wide open doorway are
elaborately carved, and on the transverse beam above is the following
inscription in old English characters:--
This haulle was buylded in the yeare of oure Lord God mccccclxii
by Uryan Breretonn Knight whom maryed Margaret daughter and heyre of
Wyllyam handforth of Handforthe Esquyer and had Issue vi sonnes and ii
daughters.
The inner mouldings of the sideposts are enriched with the running
figure of the stem and foliage of the briar, similar to that carved
on the screen in Cheadle Church, and the same ornament is continued
along the under side of the lintel, with the addition of a tun in the
centre, and the initials V and B placed one at each angle. The outer
face of each sidepost had an arabesque ornament carved in low relief,
the one on the left terminating in a shield of arms now so much worn by
exposure to the weather as to be scarcely decipherable, though in its
perfect state it represented the coat of Brereton impaling Honford or
Handforth--the sinister half, quarterly, first and fourth, _argent_ two
bars _sable_, on the upper bar a crescent of the first, between the
bars a cross fleury _gules_, charged with five bezants for Brereton;
second and third, _argent_ a chevron between three crescents _gules_
for Ipstones. On the dexter half, quarterly, first and fourth, _sable_
an estoile _argent_ for Honford; second and third _gules_, a scythe
_argent_ for Praers. On the sidepost on the right of the doorway the
carved ornamentation terminates in the Brereton crest--a bear's head
erased ppr., muzzled _or_, on the neck a cross patée for difference.
The interior in its general arrangement has in the course of years
undergone considerable change, alterations having been made from time
to time as the requirements or convenience of successive occupants have
dictated; but, notwithstanding the altered purposes to which many of
the apartments are now applied, it still exhibits a good deal of its
ancient character, and happily the oaken panelling and other carvings
that remain have escaped alike the common infliction of whitewash and
the sacrilegious touch of the painter's brush. The most remarkable
feature is the wide and handsome oak staircase that is no doubt
coeval with the erection of the building. It is in a perfect state,
and furnishes a more than usually good example of the carpentry of
the Elizabethan period; the balusters of the same material are flat,
the upper portion being enriched with a series of small enarchments
and other decorations, with the addition of a broad heavy handrail,
bright with the rubbings of successive generations. This staircase
communicates with a landing on the upper storey, admission to which is
gained by a large panelled folding-door, black with age and ornamented
with fleurs-de-lis, &c.
On the slope below the hall the searching eye may still discover traces
of the old plesaunce with the fish-ponds and terraces that existed when
it was in truth a pleasure ground, when the parterres were garnished
with thick borders of yew and thyme and bushes of sweet-smelling briar,
and the dainty masses of greenness were bespangled with flowers of
every hue, for our forefathers knew the true uses of a garden as well
as of a house, and were not restricted by the ideas that guide their
successors in the present day.
The hand of improvement, like the "Spectral bunch of digits," in
the fairy tale, is fast plucking our ancient monuments from the
soil. Handforth remains, but its palmy days have long since passed
away, never to return; but even in its present abject state, whether
considered as a relic of antiquity or as associated with some of the
most important events in the history of the county and the country,
it will, while it exists, have strong claims upon attention and call
up imaginative fancies as to the fate of those who lived and died
within it, for how many a volume of happy or mournful history--of
deep affection and patient endurance--of daring deeds and heroic
actions--may we not read as we tread its dismantled apartments and gaze
upon its venerable walls, for--
Here the warrior dwelt,
And in this mansion, children of his own,
Or kindred, gathered round him. As a tree
That falls and disappears, the house is gone;
And, through our improvidence or want of love
For ancient worth and honourable things,
The spear and shield are vanished, which the knight
Hung in his castle hall.
The manor of Handforth was owned for many generations by a family
who derived their patronymic from their estate. It is not known with
certainty when or how they acquired possession, but the name occurs in
the local records as early as the reign of Henry III., at which time
(circa 1233-6) Robert de Stokeport granted to Henry de Honford the
ville or town of Bosden, forming part of the lands of his barony of
Stockport. A descendant of this Henry, Roger de Honford, accompanied
Edward the Black Prince in his expedition against the King of France,
and, as we learn from an entry on the Cheshire Recognisance Rolls
preserved in the Record Office, he was rewarded by the Prince, who was
also Earl of Chester, for his "services in Gascony, and particularly at
the battle of Poitiers." Those were days in which--
Each sturt bowman, dauntless, ready, true,
Scoured through the glades and twanged his bow of yew.
The men of Cheshire were noted for their skill in archery. They looked
upon the earls of their palatinate as their titular sovereigns, and
fighting under their banner gained much renown in the wars of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and nowhere did they display
greater bravery or win more renown for England than on the morning of
that memorable Monday in September, 1356--ten years after the fight
at Crescy--when the Black Prince, with his small force of 8,000,
found himself surprised by the King of France, with an army of 60,000
men. The result we know; rather than beat a dishonourable retreat
or yield to superior numbers, the Prince accepted battle, and, ere
midday was reached, the red Oriflamme, with its golden lilies, was
laid in the dust; the mighty host of France was completely routed,
those who escaped with life flying from the fields of Beauvoir and
Maupertuis to the very gates of the city of Poitiers; and the French
King himself, with his youthful son, Prince Philip, were prisoners
in the English camp. In a locality full of the recollections of the
glory of France; where Clovis defeated Alaric, King of the Goths, and
established the faith of the creed of St. Athanasius--where Charles
Martel drove back the host of invading Saracens and saved Europe from
Mahometanism--England added to her laurels her proudest and most
brilliant victory--Poitiers. In that death struggle the flower of
Cheshire chivalry were engaged, and the Cheshire bowmen bore themselves
bravely and well. Roger de Honford shared in the glories, and greatly
distinguished himself on that memorable day; and it was well for him,
perhaps, that he had the opportunity of atoning by his bravery for
certain offences that he would seem to have been previously guilty of,
for it is recorded on the Recognisance Roll that on the 25th May in
the following year (1357) a warrant was granted by Edward the Black
Prince for a pardon to him and one William de Neuton or Newton, of all
felonies, &c., committed by them in the county of Chester, except the
death of the Prince's ministers and of Bertram de Norden and Richard de
Bechton.
Mr. Earwaker, in his "History of East Cheshire," tells us that another
member of the family, Geoffrey, son of John de Honford, met with his
death in 1360 by foul means. In what way is not stated, but in all
probability it was in one of the forays that in those days were of such
frequent occurrence between the owners of neighbouring lands, when in
the case of a feud one or other of the disputants, impatient of the
dilatory and uncertain processes of the law, would be tempted to adopt
the simpler and less tardy method of taking the adjustment of his
differences into his own hands and making a raid upon his adversary's
possessions, for on the 23rd November, 35 and 36 Edward III. (1363),
Edward Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, granted a pardon to John de
Hyde, Knight, apparently the head of the house of Norbury and Hyde;
William, son of John de Hyde; John, son of William de Hyde; and Hugh
Frensshye, servant of Sir John de Hyde, for the death of Geoffrey, son
of John de Honford, on the payment of 200 marks (£133 6s. 8d.). The
name of the servant implicated, Frensshye, suggests the idea that he
may have been brought over, possibly as a captive, from France by some
representative of the house of Hyde.
Geoffrey de Honford left an only daughter, Katharine, his heir, then
under age, and as appears by an enrolment of January 13, 1360-1, Robert
de Legh, the younger, had a grant of the custody of the lands, together
with the wardship and marriage of the said Katharine.
Subsequently to this time the name is of frequent occurrence in the
public records, but the actual relationship of the persons mentioned
has not been ascertained, and it is not until near the close of the
century that we meet with anything like a continuous record. In 1393
an inquisition was taken after the death of John, the son of Henry
de Honford, who had by his wife, Margaret, the daughter and co-heir
of William de Praers, who predeceased him, an elder son, John, who
succeeded as heir; and in addition a son, William de Honford, who
attained to considerable note in the county. In 1402 he was appointed
with Robert de Newton, of Longdendale, and others, collector of a
subsidy in the Hundred of Macclesfield granted to the King. There
appears to have been some irregularity respecting the descent of the
land which he inherited from his mother, Margaret, one of William de
Praers's co-heiresses, for, in 1407, Henry Prince of Wales granted
him a lease of the lands and tenements in Wylaston, near Alvendeston,
belonging to Alexander de Venables and his wife, and which were then in
the Prince's hands by reason of their having been alienated to William
de Praers without licence being first obtained. He married Isabel, the
widow of her kinsman, Robert de Legh, of Adlington, who had died of the
pestilence at Harfleur, just before the battle of Agincourt was fought,
in 1415, and having, in 1420, acquired lands in Chorley, in Wilmslow
parish, he founded the line of the Honfords, of Chorley Hall.
In 1397 John de Honford, who, four years previously, had succeeded as
heir to the paternal estate of Handforth, had a grant from the Crown of
an annuity of 100s., the King having retained him in his service for
life. He did not, however, long enjoy it, his death occurring in 1400,
when John de Honford, his son, then only nine years of age, succeeded
as heir.
This John, on attaining to manhood, well sustained the martial fame
of his progenitors, and served with distinction in the French wars
in the reigns of Henry V. and VI. In 1424 he took part in the famous
battle of Verneuil (August 17), when the Regent, the Duke of Bedford,
utterly routed the French army in an engagement that is described on
the rolls of Parliament as "the greatest deed done by Englishmen in our
days, save the battle of Agincourt," and it is not unlikely that it
was here he won his spurs; so conspicuous was he in the battle that in
acknowledgment of his bravery a pension of £100 Tournois was granted
him for life out of the forfeited possessions of John Tancrope, as
fully set forth in an ancient document preserved among the Adlington
MSS. in the Chetham Library. The victory at Verneuil was followed by
a reverse in 1427. For some time the war was carried on without any
decided success on either side, but in the year just named the forces
of the Duke of Bedford sustained a severe defeat, which compelled them
to raise the siege of Montarges, and it is more than probable that Sir
John de Honford, who had participated in the glories of the previous
victory, shared in the mortification of that disaster, for his name
occurs on the Cheshire Rolls in that year as being "about to depart for
France."
From that time misfortune followed upon misfortune. A simple country
girl--Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans--had been wonderfully raised up
to serve her country's need; victory followed wherever she led, and
after several actions the English, in 1429, were compelled to raise
the siege of Orleans. No story of ancient heroism reads more like
a romance. The English never recovered the blow struck by the maid
for the freedom of her country. Their hold upon the soil of France
gradually relaxed, and one by one the territories which had been won
by the sword were surrendered. The Duke of Bedford gathered a vast
force for the prosecution of the war; Sir John de Honford was in his
retinue, and in a contemporary document his name occurs as holding,
in 1434, the important post of Keeper of the Bridge over the Seine at
Rouen for the Regent Bedford, with one horseman, three lance soldiers
on foot, and twenty bowmen. ("_Pons de Rone super aquam de Sayne:
Johannes Hanneford, chevalier locum tenens domini regentis (cum) i
lanceam equestrem iij lanceas pedesires et xx archers._") Those were
evil times for England; Harfleur, the first trophy of Henry V., had
been recaptured in 1432, and in 1435 the peace of Arras was concluded
between Charles VII. and the Duke of Burgundy, the news of which caused
the young King Henry to weep. At this important crisis in her history
England sustained an irreparable loss by the death of the Duke of
Bedford, who expired at Rouen September 14, 1435, at the very time the
negotiations for the peace were being concluded.
Sir John de Honford must have quitted his post at Rouen, for before the
close of the year he with other influential knights and gentry of the
shire were summoned to the King's council at Chester for the purpose
of granting a subsidy to enable him to carry on the war. Whether he
returned to Normandy with the reinforcements or took part in the
engagements in which Harfleur was retaken, and the brave Lord Talbot
won such renown, is not clear, but his martial spirit could not find
happiness in repose, and in 1441 (October 26) we find him entering
into an engagement with Humphrey Earl (afterwards Duke) of Buckingham,
then owner of the fortified stronghold of Macclesfield, to serve him
in a military capacity for the remainder of his life in consideration
of an annual fee of £10 chargeable on the manor of Thornbury, in
Gloucestershire.
There was no standing army in England then; fighting was done
by contract, and such agreements were therefore not of uncommon
occurrence. Upon emergencies forces were raised by the King's letters
under the Privy Seal; lords, knights, and esquires quickly responded
to the summons of the sovereign, and an army was readily got together
if the means of paying the adventurous spirits who comprised it were
forthcoming. But it must not be supposed that the fighting Englishmen
of those days were taken from the plough without any previous military
training. The casque and the morion were hung up in the cottage of the
serf as well as in the castle of the feudatory chief, and the good yew
bow was suspended in the halls of the knights and esquires for the use
of their servants and retainers, in accordance with the statute (II
Henry IV.) to shoot at the butts on every Sunday and high festival, the
municipal authorities at the same time being required to see that the
youths in their respective districts were taught to send the "light
flight-arrow" to the legal distance of 220 yards, so that when they
had grown to lusty manhood they might perform the same feat with the
heavy war-arrow. Hence, in those days there were to be found Locksleys
in every village to whom the long range offered no difficulty when the
King's letter came, whether direct or through the chief landowner to
his subinfeudatory tenants and partisans.
Three years after Sir John Honford had entered into the agreement with
the Earl of Buckingham he was appointed one of the Justices in Eyre for
the three Hundreds of Cheshire, and in 1449 he is again found on active
service in Normandy--this time with the army commanded by the Duke of
Somerset. The truce agreed to in 1444 had been broken, complications
had arisen, the town of Fougiers in Brittann had been seized, and in
the month of April Sir John ("Messire Jehan Hanneford, chevalier,"
as he is styled) was specially commissioned to return to England and
report to the King the outrages that had been committed. It was the
beginning of the end. One by one the provinces which had been won had
been surrendered, and even those which Henry had inherited were given
up. In July the French King invaded Normandy, Somerset had to submit
to the capitulation of Rouen. Cherbourg was the last town to yield, it
surrendered August 12, 1450, and thus in one campaign, almost without
a struggle, England lost the large and fertile province of Normandy,
containing more than a hundred fortified towns; Calais was the only
possession retained in France, and that Queen Mary lost a century
later; yet with a strange infatuation the Kings of England paraded the
empty title of Kings of France and bore the golden lilies upon their
heraldic shield until the first day of the present century, when by
Royal Proclamation they were removed.
Of Sir John Honford's subsequent adventures little or nothing is known,
and even the time of his death has not been ascertained with certainty;
but it must have been about 1461, for in that year the manor of Honford
was conveyed to his son, also named John. Mr. Earwaker says it is
possible he died abroad; but this is scarcely likely, for there was
then little for an English soldier to do abroad, and much to occupy
his attention at home; and we can hardly suppose that such a veteran
as Sir John de Honford would let his sword remain in the scabbard when
in England the storm-cloud of war had burst, and the rival houses of
York and Lancaster were in their death struggle--"the convulsive and
bleeding agony of the feudal power." It was the year which ended the
inglorious and unhappy reign of the "meek usurper" Henry VI., that
in which Edward of York was borne to the throne upon the shoulders
of the people--the year of Mortimer's Cross, of the second battle of
St. Alban's and of Towton, the crowning victory of the White Rose.
Though there is no record of the fact, it is more than probable that
his remains were interred in the chantry at Cheadle, and from its
appearance and general characteristics it would seem likely that the
older of the two alabaster effigies there was placed over them to
perpetuate his memory. Though the sword has disappeared, the figure of
the old warrior, in its rich suit of ornamented armour, still remains
comparatively perfect; the uncovered head resting upon his helmet, a
pillow not much softer than that which Henry V. regretted that his
faithful follower, Sir Thomas Erpingham, had to repose on, when, on the
night before the fight at Agincourt, he exclaimed--
A good soft pillow for that good white head
Were better than a churlish turf of France.
John Honford, who succeeded as heir on the death of his father, had
married in 1422 Margery, one of the daughters of Sir Laurence Warren,
of Poynton. He died in October, 1473, and was succeeded by his son,
also named John, who had to wife Margaret, daughter of Sir John Savage,
of Clifton. By this lady, who survived him and married for her second
husband Sir Edmund Trafford, of Trafford, he had two sons; John, the
eldest, predeceased him, and William, the younger, succeeded as heir.
He was under age at the time of his father's death in 1487, and,
fortunately for him, the wardship of his lands and the sale of his hand
in marriage was given to his grandfather, Sir John Savage, who in turn
granted them to his stepfather, Sir Edmund Trafford. Of this member of
the family but few records have been preserved. In 1513, in the month
of May, he appeared in the amiable character of a peacemaker between
Sir John Warburton and Sir William Boothe, two neighbouring knights,
who had quarrelled over the rights they respectively claimed to cut
turf on Warburton Moss; and William Honford, Sir Thomas Boteler, Sir
Richard Bold, and Laurence Marbury drew up a deed by which the matters
in dispute were amicably adjusted. It was one of the latest acts of
William Honford's life, for ere four months had passed, or the warm
golden tints of autumn had deepened upon the landscape, he had met a
soldier's fate. On the 9th of September, 1513, the battle of Flodden
Field was fought, and when night closed upon the scene the moon looked
down upon Sir William's corpse as it lay stiffening on Branksome Moor.
There is, perhaps, no event in the annals of the country that has
been the subject of so much exultation on the part of Lancashire and
Cheshire men, or that has formed the ground-work of so many traditions
and furnished so fruitful a theme for ballad writers as the victory of
Flodden Field. Contemporary records are full of the achievements of the
heroes of that memorable day, and the valiant deeds of those who bore a
part in the fight have oft been celebrated in prose and rhyme.
To town and tower, to down and dale,
To tell red Flodden's dismal tale,
And raise the universal wail,
Tradition, legend, tune, and song,
Shall many an age that wail prolong;
Still from the sire the son shall hear
Of the stern strife, and carnage drear,
Of Flodden's fatal field,
When shivered was fair Scotland's spear,
And broken was her shield.
It was an overthrow which spread sorrow and dismay through Scotland;
patriots bewailed it, poets sang dirges over it, and long was it
remembered as one of the greatest calamities that country had sustained.
Henry VIII. was at the time besieging Terouenne, and the Scottish
King, thinking it a favourable opportunity for a descent upon England,
mustered a large force, crossed the Tweed, and sat down before the
castle of Norham, which surrendered in a few days; three other border
fortresses fell in quick succession, when the invading host continued
its march southwards. The report of this plundering raid fired the
ardour of the English people, and roused the men of Lancashire and
Cheshire to enthusiasm. The war note which had been sounded met with a
ready response; William Honford prepared himself for the field, and
he and many of his neighbours summoned their retainers, and, mustering
under the banners of their respective leaders, marched to meet King
James of Scotland, their force consisting for the most part of archers
and billmen, and, as the tablet formerly preserved in the old church of
Bolton-le-Sands expressed it--
The bolt shot well, I ween,
From arablast of yew tree green,
Many nobles prostrate lay
On the glorious Flodden day.
On reaching Hornby the Lancashire and Cheshire forces placed themselves
under the command of Sir Edward Stanley--
From Lancashire and Cheshire, too,
To Stanley came a noble train
To Hornby, from whence he withdrew
And forward set with all his train.
The two armies met on the 8th September, on the banks of the Till,
a branch of the Tweed, that flows by the foot of the Cheviot Hills,
and the battle began on the afternoon of the following day, the Scots
having descended from their position on the heights of Flodden. The
Earl of Surrey, who had been entrusted by the Queen Regent with the
command, divided his forces into two parts; the vanguard he confided
to his son, the Lord Admiral, and the rear he headed himself. Sir
Edmund Howard commanded the right wing, and Sir Edward Stanley the
left. The fight began about four o'clock, and the contest was fierce
and furious. The first report was that the Cheshire men, overwhelmed by
a large body of Scottish spearmen, had wavered and fallen back; and,
as ill news always travels apace, this report, it is said, was the
first that reached King Henry, then at Terouenne. The battle swayed
to and fro for some time until the Scottish ranks were thinned by the
murderous discharges of the English archers; their King, James IV.,
surrounded by a strong body of knights, fought on foot, and seeing the
English standard almost, as he thought, within his grasp, marched with
steady step to secure it. It was the agony and very turning point of
the contest, for at the same moment Sir Edward Stanley, heading the
Lancashire and Cheshire bowmen, led the famous charge which Scott has
enshrined in imperishable verse--
Victory!
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!
Were the last words of Marmion.
It turned the fortunes of the day. The shock was irresistible, and the
Scottish force fell into disorder; 10,000 of the bravest of Scotia's
warriors were slain, and her King fell a lifeless corpse almost within
a spear's length of the feet of Surrey. Among those who bit the dust
that day were the Archbishop of St. Andrews, two bishops, two abbots,
twelve earls, thirteen barons, five eldest sons of barons, and fifty
other persons of distinction, including the French Ambassador, the
King's secretary, and, last and saddest of all, the King himself.
"Scarce a family of eminence," says Scott, "but has an ancestor killed
at Flodden," as the Scottish minstrel laments:--
Dool and wae for the order, sent our lads to the border!
The English for ance, by guile wan the day;
The flowers of the forest, that fought aye the foremost,
The prime of our land, are cauld in the clay.
We'll hear nae mair lilting at the ewe milking;
Women and bairns are heartless and wae;
Sighing and moaning on ilka green loaning--
The flowers of the forest are a' wede awae.
The English loss was also very severe, the number slain being estimated
at seven thousand; but the men of rank who fell were not nearly so
numerous. Cheshire lost many of her sons, among them William Honford,
of Handforth, with his neighbours, Thomas Venables, the Baron of
Kinderton; Christopher Savage, the valiant Mayor of Macclesfield; and
many substantial burgesses of that town.[25] As the ancient poem of
"Scottish Feilde," believed to have been written by a Cheshire man--a
Legh, of Baguley--expresses it--
The Barne (Baron) of Kinderton full kenely,
was killed them beside;
So was Honforde, I you hete,
that was a hynde swyer![26]
Fulleswise[27] full feil,
was fallen to the grounde!
Christopher Savadge was downecaste
that kere[28] might be never!
Another of the heroes of Flodden, more fortunate than William Honford,
we shall meet with anon--Sir John Stanley, who afterwards became lord
of Handforth Hall.
With the death of William Honford the direct line of the house of
Honford terminated, the estates devolving upon his only daughter,
Margaret, a child of ten years at the time her father lost his life.
His widow, Sibyl, some twelve years later became the second wife of
Laurence Warren, of Poynton, Esquire. William Honford's Inquisition,
from some cause or other, was not taken until January, 1516; his
daughter Margaret, then twelve years of age, was found to be his heir,
and in the interval between the victory at Flodden and the taking
of the Inquisition she had been married by her feoffees to Sir John
Stanley, William Honford's companion in arms.
Sir John Stanley, who was about seven years older than his youthful
bride, was an illegitimate son of James Stanley, warden of Manchester,
and afterwards Bishop of Ely, a younger son of that Thomas, Lord
Stanley, who according to popular tradition, which, by the way, is
in this instance a popular error, placed the crown of the vanquished
Richard upon the head of the victorious Henry of Richmond on the field
of Bosworth.[29] The mother of Sir John was doubtless the lady to
whom Fuller in his quaint fashion refers, when, commenting upon the
Bishop's frailty in the infraction of his vow of celibacy, he says that
he blamed him not "for passing the summer with his brother (? nephew)
the Earl of Derby, in Lancashire, but for living all the winter at
Somersham, in Huntingdonshire, with one who was not his sister, and who
wanted nothing to make her his wife save marriage."
When the war note had been sounded, and the enthusiasm of the
Lancashire men had been roused by the threat of invasion, Bishop
Stanley, with ready response, summoned his retainers and dependents,
but, unlike the Abbot of Vale Royal, who led his contingent to the
field in person, and by his presence gave the sanction of religion
to the cause, placed them under the charge of his young son, John
Stanley--"that child so young," as Weber calls him in one of his
ballads--to whom the writer of the metrical story of the "Scottish
Feilde" has incorrectly assigned the place of honour as the real
commander in the decisive attack in the battle, instead of his uncle,
Sir Edward Stanley, who, as we know, for his bravery, was in the
following year created Lord Monteagle.
Sir John Stanley that stowte knight,
That stern was of deedes!
With four thousand fursemen[30]
That followed him after;
They were tenantes that they tooke,
that tenden on the bishopp.
Of his household, I you hete
hope ye no other,
Every burne had on his breast
browdered with goulde;
A fote of the faireste foule
that ever flowe on winge!
With their crownes full cleare
all of pure goulde!
Yt was a semely sight,
to see them togeder,
Fourtene thousand egill feete,[31]
feteled in arraye.
That the Bishop of Ely raised so large a contingent as 4,000 may be
very much doubted, but, whatever their number, his son, who had the
command, displayed such prowess that he was knighted upon the field.
About the time of Sir John Stanley's marriage with the heiress of
William Honford, his father, the Bishop of Ely, died. While holding
the wardenship of Manchester he had built the spacious chapel on the
north side of the Collegiate Church, now the Cathedral, known in the
present day as the Derby Chapel; this was completed in the year in
which Flodden was fought, and at the time of his death, in 1515, he
was employed in erecting a smaller chapel adjoining it, in which his
tomb is placed. This chapel Sir John, in accordance with his father's
directions, completed, and placed over the door the arms of himself and
his wife with a supplicatory inscription, prefaced by his favourite
motto, _Vanitas Vanitatum et omnia Vanitas_.
In 1519 he was appointed with Sir Peter Legh, of Lyme, William
Swetenham, of Somerford, and John Holynworth, collector of a subsidy
within the Hundred of Macclesfield. Four years afterwards he became
involved in a dispute with his neighbour, George Legh, of Adlington,
respecting the renewal of the lease of the tithes of Prestbury, a grant
of which he had contrived to obtain from the Abbot of St. Werburgh,
at Chester, the particulars of which are more fully set forth in the
account of Adlington Hall and the Leghs.[32] Sir John, having refused
to surrender his lease, was committed to the Fleet at the instance of
Cardinal Wolsey, a high-handed procedure that subsequently formed one
of the charges in the articles of impeachment exhibited against that
ecclesiastic, and it was not until he had undergone a twelve months'
imprisonment that he could be induced to yield.
The ardent soldier who had displayed such valour in the field at
Flodden on attaining maturer years became somewhat of a religious
enthusiast, and while yet comparatively a young man, being little more
than thirty, retired from the world, and sought the seclusion of the
cloister, from, as has been said, "displeasure taken in heart" at the
treatment he had received at Wolsey's hands.
In 1527-8 he obtained "letters of fraternity" from the Abbot of
Westminster, and in a volume of MS. pedigrees at Tabley, near
Knutsford, there is still preserved the original grant under the
convent seal of the abbey, dated January 5th, under which John, abbot
of that house, grants to Sir John Stanley and dame Margaret, his wife;
John Stanley, their heir; and Anne Stanley, their sister; that they
shall be prayed for in that monastery, "_in vita pariter et in morte_,"
and all other places in their order through England, and that their
names shall be enrolled on the fraternity's martyrology _post obitum_.
Whatever may have been the cause of Sir John's withdrawal from society,
certain it is that, having arranged all his worldly affairs, he and his
wife, in 1528, prayed for a divorce in order that they might severally
devote themselves to a religious life and be quit of the world. The
divorce was granted, Sir John and his wife were released from their
marriage vows, and put asunder one from the other for ever. He entered
the Abbey of Westminster, and assumed the cowl and tonsure of a monk,
and it is believed that his death occurred shortly afterwards.
Mr. William Beamont, in his "Notes on the Lancashire Stanleys,"
thus sums up his character:--"His mind turned towards seriousness
if not sadness. He loved the Preacher's motto 'All is vanity,' and
where he could he liked to inscribe it openly. This natural tendency
was deepened and increased by the stigma of his birth and other
circumstances which he could not forget. The stain on his father's
life, and his death excommunicated, would not let him, even in the
inscription on his grave, where he supplicates for him the prayers of
the faithful, call the bishop by the sacred name of father, and in the
letters of fraternity all mention of his father's name is avoided.
Sir John's mind dwelt too much upon chantries, burial-places, obits,
indulgences, and the like. It was his favourite subject, and he crowned
this part of his career by retreating from the world and disappearing
in the deep shadow of the cloister."
Sir John left an only son, bearing his own baptismal name, who was an
infant at the time of his parents' divorce. His father's will provided
that he should be placed under the care of the Abbess of Barkyng until
he should attain the age of twelve years, when he was to be transferred
to the care of the Abbot of Westminster, with whom it was directed he
should remain until he was twenty-one, when, and not before, he was to
be at liberty to choose himself a wife, with the advice of the Abbot of
Westminster and Edmund Trafford, Esq. Of his subsequent career little
is known. He attained to manhood, when he married Ellen, daughter of
Sir Edward Fitton, of Gawsworth, Knight, but does not appear to have
had any issue by her. He was living in 1551, but after that all trace
of him is lost, and with him the line terminated.
In the east window of the little chantry chapel in Cheadle Church,
to which reference has already been made, there are some remains of
heraldic glass, very fragmentary in character, but which still serve
to perpetuate the memory of Sir John Stanley and his wife Margaret,
the heiress of Handforth. The mantling and the helmet, with a part of
the crest, are there; but the shield itself has been much mutilated.
Sufficient, however, remains to indicate what the charges have been,
and on one side may still be seen a label bearing the words "_Vanitas
Vanitatum_," the other side, doubtless, having had at one time a
corresponding label inscribed with the remainder of Sir John Stanley's
mournful motto--"_et Omnia Vanitas_." In its pristine state the shield
was divided paleways, the dexter half--_or_, three eagles' feet erased
_gules_, on a chief indented _azure_ three stags' heads caboshed _or_
for Stanley of Handforth; the sinister half--quarterly first and
fourth, _sable_, an estoile _argent_ for Honford, second and third,
_gules_, a scythe _argent_ for Praers. Crest an eagle's head erased
_or_, holding in its mouth an eagle's claw erased _gules_. Only the
chief of the Stanley coat and the second and fourth quarters of the
sinister pale with a fragment of the crest remain.
Dame Margaret Stanley, the wife of Sir John, who appears to have shared
in some degree the religious fervour of her husband, had also evidently
intended entering a religious house, but when the divorce was obtained
and Sir John had been comfortably settled among the monkish fraternity
at Westminster her opinions underwent a change. She was still young,
being only about five-and-twenty, and the world, it would seem, had not
altogether lost its attractions, for she abandoned the idea of becoming
a recluse, and again entered the marriage state, choosing for her
second husband a scion of the ancient house of Brereton, a family that
boasted an antiquity equal to that of any house in Cheshire, tracing
its descent back very nearly to the time when Duke William of Normandy
parcelled out the newly-conquered country among his warlike followers.
The original Breretons, who derived their patronymic from the manor of
that name, if we may judge from the arms they bore, were kinsmen, if
not actually direct descendants of Gilbert Venables, the first Norman
Baron of Kinderton, and from them descended Sir Urian Brereton, who
became the second husband of William Honford's daughter and heiress,
and the builder of the present Hall of Handforth.
Sir William Brereton, who was lord of Brereton in the reign of
Edward III., had by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Henry
Done, of Utkinton, a younger son, Randolph, who received the honour
of knighthood, and had to wife Alice, daughter and heir of William
de Ipstones, through whom he acquired considerable territorial
possessions, and became the founder of the line of Brereton of
Shocklach and Malpas, in Cheshire. His great-grandson, also a Sir
Randle, was Chamberlain of Chester in the reign of Henry VII., and one
of the knights of the body to that King. He is mentioned generally
as Chamberlain to Henry VII., and he acted in the same capacity to
Henry's son and successor, Henry VIII., holding the same office under
both sovereigns for the long period of twenty-six years. At the time
that William Brereton, of Honford, and his compatriots were engaged in
the death struggle at Flodden, King Henry, as previously stated, was
with an army at Terouenne; Sir Randle Brereton was with him, and for
his distinguished services there and at Tourney he was made a knight
banneret. He built the Brereton chancel in Malpas Church in 1522, and
carved upon the oaken screen this supplication:--
Pray good people for the prosperous estate of Sir Rondulph Brereton,
of thys werke edificatour, wyth his wyfe dame Helenour, and after thys
lyfe transytorie to obtegne eternal felicitie. Amen. Amen.
His wife, "Dame Helenour," bore him a family of nine sons and three
daughters. Sir Randle, the eldest, continued the Malpas line; Sir
Richard founded the line of Brereton of Tatton; Sir William Brereton,
the seventh son, succeeded his father as Chamberlain of Chester, and
was also made Groom of the Chamber to King Henry VIII., an office that
involved him in the ruin that befell the second of that sovereign's
wives. He married Elizabeth, widow of Sir John Savage, and the daughter
of Charles Somerset, Earl of Worcester; and on the 17th May, 1536, when
only twenty-eight years of age, and then recently married, was beheaded
along with Lord Rochfort, the Queen's brother; Sir Henry Norris,
Groom of the Stole; Francis Weston, a Gentleman of the Bedchamber;
and Mark Smeaton, a musician, on the questionable charge of criminal
intercourse with Queen Anne Boleyn, the Queen herself submitting to
the same unhappy fate on Tower Green two days later; a hideous crime
that has found an apologist in a modern historian--Froude--who, in his
exuberant admiration of Henry's self-asserting force of character, has
sought to prove a "human being sinful whom the world has ruled to be
innocent," oblivious of the fact that, while on the one hand there is a
total absence of satisfactory proof against Anne, there is undeniable
evidence of heartless cruelty, wilfulness, revenge, and shameless lust
on the part of her husband. On the morrow of her death the King married
Jane Seymour; but getting rid of one wife in order to obtain another
was not a solitary act in the life of Henry.
The memory of that cruel wrong long rankled in the mind of the
Breretons, and the recollection may not improbably have had its
influence on Sir William Brereton, who a century later did so much
to accomplish the overthrow of monarchy, and who in this way may be
said to have avenged the death of his kinsman, and thus have added
one of those retributive parallels of which history furnishes so many
instances.
Sir William Brereton, who came to so untimely an end in 1536, had a
younger brother, Urian Brereton, who in his earlier life was also one
of the Grooms of the Privy Chamber. In 1526 he was appointed Ranger of
Delamere Forest, and the same year Escheater of Cheshire, the latter an
office he also held in the successive reigns of Edward VI., Mary, and
Elizabeth, until his death in 1577. On the voluntary seclusion of Sir
John Stanley, Urian Brereton married his divorced wife, Margaret, the
daughter of William Honford, and thus became the founder of the line of
Brereton of Handforth.
The vindictive feeling which Henry manifested towards Sir William
Brereton was not extended to the person of his younger brother, for the
King, as if to mark the appeasement of his wrath, not only retained
him in his position as Groom of the Privy Chamber, but also conferred
other offices of distinction upon him. On the 8th July, 1538, he had a
grant for life of the office of Attorney of the King in the counties
of Chester and Flint; and on the 1st of August following he had a
grant for life in survivorship of the office of Sheriff of the county
of Flint on the surrender of the same by his kinsman, John Brereton,
on whom it had been bestowed four months previously, and on the 16th
of June, 1543, he and Randle Cholmondeley had conferred upon them
the appointment for life, in survivorship, of the office of Attorney
of the Earl of Chester (the young Prince Edward) in the counties of
Chester and Flint. In 1544 he accompanied the Earl of Hertford in the
expedition to Scotland to demand the infant Queen Mary, who had been
promised in marriage to the King's son, Edward Earl of Chester, and he
was present at the burning of Leith, where, in acknowledgment of his
valorous deeds, he received the honour of knighthood.
Shortly after the expedition to Scotland Sir Urian Brereton had the
misfortune to lose his wife, Dame Margaret, who died at Handforth Hall,
though the exact date of her decease has not been ascertained, the
registers of Cheadle, where doubtless she was buried, not commencing
until 1558. Her manors and lands descended to the son by her first
husband, John Stanley, who on the 24th May, 1 Edward VI. (1547) entered
into a covenant with Sir Urian Brereton under which the estates were
settled between them.
On the 7th of July, 1550, Sir Urian and his relative, Richard Brereton,
Esq., had conferred upon them for life, in survivorship, the office
of Escheater of the county of Flint, and shortly after he commenced
the rebuilding of the Hall of Handforth, completing it in 1562, as the
inscription over the door, which has been already given, testifies. He
also about the same time erected the handsome carved oak screen in the
Brereton chantry at Cheadle church, placing upon it his initials, V.
B., and his punning rebus, a briar and a tun.
After the death of Dame Margaret Sir Urian again entered the marriage
state, his second wife being Alice, the third daughter of Sir Edmund
Trafford, of Trafford, Esq., and the widow of Sir William Leyland, of
Morleys Hall, in Astley. His death occurred at Handforth Hall on the
19th of March, 1577, and twelve days later his remains were interred
at Cheadle. By his first wife he had, as the inscription over the
porch at Handforth records, six sons and two daughters, and by his
second wife, who survived him little more than a year, one son and
four daughters. His Inquisition was taken at Knutsford on the 28th
March, 1580, when Randle Brereton, his eldest son, then of the age
of forty, was found to be his heir; he did not, however, long enjoy
possession, his death occurring on the 30th December, 1583, when, being
unmarried, the estates, in accordance with a deed of settlement of
1575, devolved upon his younger brother, William Brereton, who five
years previously, had been united in marriage with Katherine, daughter
of Roger Hurleston, of Chester, and who was at the time described as
"of the Nunneryes, Chester," a house and lands which the "Defender
of the Faith" had taken from the fair nuns of Chester and given to
his favourite, Sir Urian Brereton, the founder of the Handforth line.
This William served the office of Sheriff of the county in 1590, and
died at Handforth on the 5th June, 1601, at the age of fifty-three. He
was buried at Cheadle, and Mr. Earwaker gives a copy of his funeral
certificate transcribed from the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum
(879 fo. 18):--
William Brereton of Honford Esquier died the fifth day of June A.D.
1601; he maryed Katherine daughter of Roger Hurlestonne of Chester,
gent. and has issue three sonnes and two daughters, viz. Urian first
sonne died young, Richard third sonne died young, Jane eldest daughter
died young. William Brereton sonne and heire married Margaret daughter
of Richard Holland of Denton in the county of Lancaster Esq. Dorothie
Brereton only daughter now living.
His widow, Katherine, became the second wife of Sir Randle Mainwaring,
of Over Peover, Knight. William Brereton, the second and only surviving
son, who succeeded as heir, was only sixteen years of age at the
time of his father's death. By this marriage he became allied with a
family which had for many generations been resident on their lands at
Denton, and who claimed descent from the Hollands of Up-Holland, in
Lancashire, a family whose members played an active part in the most
picturesque and chivalrous period of English history; who figured among
the founders of the Order of the Garter, allied themselves repeatedly
with the royal family, attained the highest rank in the peerage, and
it may be added, experienced the greatest vicissitudes of fortune;
one of them, Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, doubly descended from the
Plantagenets and the brother-in-law of King Edward IV., being reduced
to such extremities that Philip de Commines, as he relates, saw him
"walking barefoot after the Duke of Burgundy's train, and earning his
bread by begging from door to door." The Denton Hollands from the
time of the Reformation had been noted for their leanings towards
Puritanism. Richard Holland, the father of William Brereton's wife,
when High Sheriff of Lancashire, received the thanks of Queen Elizabeth
for his services in prosecuting Popish recusants and zealously
promoting the Protestant religion, and his nephew, Colonel Holland, was
one of the earliest to take up arms in the Puritan cause in the great
struggle between Charles and his Parliament, and had the command of
Manchester when it was besieged by the Royalist forces in 1642.
William Brereton died on the 18th February, 1609-10, and was buried at
Cheadle on the 26th of the same month, his widow surviving him only
a few days, the Cheadle registers recording her burial there on the
14th April following. He left issue--in addition to two younger sons,
Richard and Urian, and a daughter, Margaret--a son, William, then
only five years of age, who succeeded as heir, and who in after years
was destined to play a conspicuous part in his country's affairs, his
military exploits becoming inseparably interwoven with the history of
his native county.
It is not known with certainty when the future Parliamentarian General
first saw the light, but, as he was baptized at the Collegiate
Church of Manchester, the probabilities are that he was born at his
grandfather's house, Denton Hall, which is situate within the limits of
the ancient parish of Manchester. Of the events of his early life but
little is known. They were apparently few, simple, and common-place,
and there is nothing in the record of them to foreshadow those strong
political and religious prejudices which afterwards developed in his
mind, or to indicate the possession of that military genius for which
he became so distinguished. He succeeded to the family inheritance at a
very early age, and being deprived of the guidance of both father and
mother was left to the care of his mother's relatives, and doubtless
imbibed from them those strong Puritan sentiments which had then become
traditional in the Holland family. He came of age in 1625, and on the
10th March, 1626-7, he had a baronetcy conferred upon him by Charles
I., who had only recently ascended the throne, though the gathering
clouds were even then heralding a political tempest. Whether he had
undertaken to perform the conditions on which the distinction was
supposed to be conferred--the furnishing of thirty men at 8d. per
day for three years for the settlement and defence of Ulster--or had
compounded by the payment of a lump sum, to replenish an exhausted
exchequer, is not recorded, but we may be well assured that William
Brereton was made of sterner stuff than to have bowed in the ante-room
of either the coarse and faithless James or his successor, the proud
and dignified Charles. In the following year (1628) he was elected
as the representative of his native shire in the Parliament which
assembled on the 27th March,--a year famous as that in which the name
of Oliver Cromwell for the first time appears, and in which, to secure
the voting of supplies for the war, Charles assented to the demands
of the Petition of Rights, confirming those liberties which were
already the birthright of Englishmen. He also represented the county
in the Parliament which met on the 13th April, 1640, to be so speedily
dissolved, and, again, in that which assembled on the 3rd November in
the same year--the most extraordinary and eventful of any in England's
history--the Long Parliament.
William Brereton loved worthily, and, when he had attained to man's
estate, he married whom he loved--the daughter of Sir George Booth, of
Dunham, "free, grave, godly, brave Booth, the flower of Cheshire," as
he was described by writers of the day--a "person," as Clarendon says,
"of one of the best fortunes and interest in Cheshire, and, for the
memory of his grandfather, of absolute power with the Presbyterians,"
and the "chief corner stone" of their cause in the county. His lot
seemed an especially happy one. Boasting an old and honourable lineage,
possessed of an ample estate, which had doubtless been increased
during his long minority, successful in his marriage, endowed with
every domestic enjoyment, and surrounded by the children of his love,
of cultivated taste, too, with a mind stored with knowledge which had
expanded and ripened under the experience gained in foreign travel,
and, withal, possessing a healthy and vigorous frame that enabled him
to enjoy all outdoor pursuits, the cultivation of his lands, and the
participation in such harmless sports as country gentlemen in his day
were wont to indulge, he could only have been induced to leave the
privacy of the home life he so much loved by the stern duties of times
in which pleasure and self-gratification must unmurmuringly yield.
Clarendon speaks of his notorious aversion to the Church. This was
undoubtedly true, so far as her form of government was concerned, and
was in all likelihood heightened by the circumstances under which he
received his early training, as well as by the connections formed
in later life. Yet he was a professed member, and in 1641 his name
occurs in the parish register of Wanstead, in Surrey, with those of
about fifty of the principal inhabitants, as signing a protestation
expressive of their attachment to the Church of England and their
abhorrence of Popish innovations. He was of a sober, serious turn, and
imbued with strong religious feelings, but his attachment to the Church
could neither have been very strong nor very exclusive; he was fond of
"spicy" sermons, and seems to have listened with equal satisfaction
and delight to the discourses of a Brownist or Anabaptist as to the
ministrations of the most eminent of the preachers of the Church of
which he professed himself a member.
In 1634, when the great and awful conflict in which many of the dearest
interests of England were involved seemed as yet far distant, Sir
William Brereton made a lengthened tour in Holland and the United
Provinces, and in the following year he travelled over a great part
of England, Scotland, and Ireland. On his return he wrote an account
of his journeyings from the brief notes made on the way, and this
journal, the original MS. of which is in the possession of Sir Philip
de Malpas Grey Egerton, of Oulton, has been published by the Chetham
Society. Singular to say, there is nothing in it to lead us to suppose
that at that time the writer felt any interest in military affairs; nor
is there any reference to the great political and religious questions
which were then agitating the public mind in his own country, and in
which it might naturally be supposed he would feel much concern. The
narrative is, as Mr. Hawkins, the editor, expresses it, "a plain,
unimpassioned statement of what he saw and observed. The beauties of
nature never warm him into admiration; nor do the feelings, habits,
or phenomena of the people, or the countries which he visited, seduce
him into any philosophical investigation." He was not a deep thinker,
and evidently looked at things from a purely matter of fact point of
view; his observations are confined in a great measure to a description
of what he saw and heard, and not unfrequently comparison is drawn
between the places he visited and those of a kindred character in his
own country, generally to the advantage of the latter. He describes
pleasantly the "stately city of Rotterdam" and the "fair maiden town
of Dort;" Schiedam he describes as a "dainty, sweet, pleasant town,
larger than Namptwich," with "a delicate, spacious, market-place, a
fine church, and a great channel walled on both sides with free-stone,
running along the middle of the street, whereunto their ships come." He
descants upon land tillage, tells the prices of dairy and farm produce,
and generally expresses his opinion on the system of agriculture
pursued; but that which seems most to have attracted his attention was
the method adopted in different places of taking wild fowl by decoys,
a hobby he appears to have indulged in at his Cheshire home, where he
says he also had a decoy, probably in the low-lying grounds, watered by
the Deane in the valley below Handforth Hall. At Amsterdam he "dined
with Mr. Pageatt," where he had "a neat dinner and strawberries." It is
pleasant to find him thus making acquaintance with a noted Cheshire
worthy, John Paget, the author of "The Defence of Presbyterian Church
Government," who had been minister of Nantwich in 1598, but who, in
1605, the year following that in which Brereton was born, had been
compelled to retire on account of his nonconformity, when he settled
at Amsterdam, where, in 1607, he had a call to the pastorate of the
English church, in which he continued to minister for the long period
of thirty years.[33]
In 1635 Sir William Brereton returned from his travels in Ireland. In
May of the following year he was in London, visiting, at Westminster
and the Temple, his younger brother Urian, whom Mr. Earwaker
incorrectly represents as dying in 1631,[34] but who in 1636 was
apparently following the law. While there he was laid up with sickness,
and "feared a violent, burning fever," but happily was soon restored to
health.
In the early summer of the succeeding year a great sorrow fell upon
him, and the gloom of sadness overshadowed his house. On the last
day of May, 1637, the solemn knell that echoed from the bell towers
of Cheadle and Bowdon churches proclaimed to hall and hamlet that
the mistress of Handforth, the beloved and cherished wife of William
Brereton, had passed away, and on the 6th of June her remains were laid
beside those of her progenitors in the quiet old church of Bowdon.
The tender and affectionate wife, the woman of his early love, the
mother of his young children, for they were still in their infancy,
was taken from him at the time when her counsel was needed most.
The trial was a sore one, and his domestic sorrow seemed to have
loosened the cords of life; his habits were entirely changed; the
green lanes, the wooded uplands, and the bosky dells that surrounded
his Cheshire home were no longer pleasant to look upon; his decoys
had lost their attractions, and he ceased to find enjoyment in those
rural pastimes and pursuits in which he had previously delighted. It
was a sorrowful episode in his life, but there was another sorrow
deepening in the country that helped to obliterate the remembrance
of it. The funeral plumes that waved over the coffin of his wife
were stirred by the trumpet blast of discontent that swept over the
country. A blow had been struck at the liberty of Englishmen; the
writ for the levying of "SHIP MONEY"--that word of lasting memory in
the annals of the nation--had been issued; a tax as startling as it
was novel, that had been raked up from among the dust of forgotten
records, had been reimposed. Hampden had resisted it, and earned for
himself thereby a cheap immortality. Ship money was in all men's
ears a hated word; Brereton's heart was stirred within him, and he
quitted his rural retirement, with its mournful associations, to join
in the great struggle against kingly prerogative. It was the levying
of this obnoxious tax that first brought him into collision with the
constituted authorities. As previously stated, he had inherited an
estate in Chester--the Nunneries, given by Henry VIII. to his ancestor,
Sir Urian Brereton. He maintained that these lands were exempted from
rating. The Mayor of Chester ignored his claim, and much personal
animosity between himself and the city was engendered in consequence.
The blood of Sir William Brereton, which had been so unrighteously
shed by King Henry, had not been avenged; the memory of that cruel
wrong still lingered, and when, in obedience to the command of Charles,
a levy was made upon his property for the payment of the hated ship
money, the slumbering feeling of discontent was fanned into the flame
of open resistance; and when the Commission of Array was issued he was
the first to incite the citizens of Chester into insurrection.
On the 27th June, 1642, Thomas Cowper, of Overleigh, then Mayor of
Chester, the Earls of Derby and Rivers, and Viscount Cholmondeley, were
appointed by Charles the Commissioners of Array for the county of the
city; and on the Monday, the 8th August, Sir William Brereton, being
at the time one of the members for the shire,[35] caused a drum to be
beaten publicly in the streets for the purpose of enlisting recruits
in the service of the Parliament, in consequence of which he narrowly
escaped falling a victim to the indignation of the populace, whose
sympathies were on the side of the King. Hemingway, in his _History of
Chester_, thus records the circumstance:--
Information of this treason having been given to the Mayor, Mr. Thomas
Cowper, this intrepid magistrate immediately directed some constables
to apprehend the leaders of the tumult, but the latter forcibly
resisted, and compelled the constables to retire, upon which the Mayor
stepped forward in person to expostulate with them on their conduct,
and upon being disrespectfully treated, he boldly advanced up to one
of the Parliamentarians, and, seizing him by the collar, delivered him
to the civil officers, at the same time wresting a broad sword from
another of the party, with which he instantly cut the drum to pieces,
securing the drummer and several others. The firm and manly demeanour
on the part of the Mayor effectually put an end to the tumult, and
finally repressed it. During the affray the common bell was rung,
the citizens lent their cheerful aid to the chief magistrate, and
when they had seen him in a state of personal security the city was
restored to peace. Sir William Brereton, a gentleman of competent
fortune in the county, and knight for the shire, and who was a strong
partizan for the Parliament, was brought before the magistrates at the
Pentice, to answer for the part he had taken in the above disturbance,
though he owed his rescue from the popular fury to the personal
interference of the Mayor; he was, however, discharged.... His
subsequent severities are stated to have proceeded from his resentment
on this occasion, and [Hemingway adds] it has been a subject of regret
to many of his political opponents, that the active interposition
of the Mayor had rescued from the popular fury a man who afterwards
proved to be so severe a scourge to the city.[36]
If the men of Chester were loyal to their Sovereign, the prevailing
feeling in the county was decidedly in favour of the Parliament; the
popular party were able to prevent the Commissioners of Array from
carrying the Royal proclamation into effect, while at the same time
their own levies proceeded with little interruption. The attempt to
maintain the neutrality of the county by the Treaty of Pacification,
as it was called, which enjoined an absolute cessation of arms and
the demolition of the fortifications made by either party in Chester,
Nantwich, Stockport, Knutsford, and any other town, having failed,
each of the hostile parties set to work to procure military stores
in anticipation of the approaching conflict. The Commission of Array
established itself at Chester, Nantwich being at the same time made
the head-quarters of those in arms against the King. Sir William
Brereton was entrusted by the Parliament with the arming of the county,
to him was also confided the seizure of the goods and weapons of the
"delinquents," as the Royalists were called, and he was subsequently
appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Parliamentarian forces in Cheshire,
Staffordshire, and Shropshire, his kinsman, Colonel Robert Dukenfield,
of Dukenfield, and Colonel Henry Bradshaw, of Marple, the elder brother
of the future judge of the High Commission Court, being two of his most
active officers.
Eager for the conflict, Sir William Brereton was unable to restrain
his impetuosity. Before any commissions were issued the sword of the
restless and robust Puritan had left the scabbard, and the blast of
his trumpet had been heard as he gathered together his dependents
and the friends of the "cause," and trained them to the use of arms;
staunch and stern enthusiasts they were, who quickly caught the spirit
of their leader, whom we can picture in imagination marshalling them in
the leafy valley of the Deane, or upon the broad plateau of Handforth
Green.
On the 25th of August, 1642, Charles appeared at Nottingham, with
a few troops of horse, and about six hundred foot, the mere shadow
of an army; the blood-red ensign, blazoned with the royal arms, and
bearing the suggestive motto, "Render unto Cæsar the things which
are Cæsar's," was set up on the hill adjoining the castle. It was a
hasty and imprudent act--a terrible symbol, reviving the traditions of
feudality, and virtually proclaiming that the kingdom was in a state of
war and the ordinary course of law at an end. Such a ceremony had not
been witnessed in England since the time when Richard III. raised his
standard on the field of Bosworth, a century and a half previously. The
auspices were not favourable; the weather was sullen and tempestuous;
the dark clouds heralded a storm, and the gloom of the lowering sky
was in harmony with the shadow that lay on men's minds. Scarcely had
the streamer been unfurled than a fierce gust of wind swept with wild
moan over the hill top and laid the emblem of sovereignty prostrate
upon the ground. It was an unhappy omen, and whispered words of
sorrowful misgiving passed from man to man. The next day the ceremony
was repeated, the trumpet sounded, the herald read the proclamation,
and the few friends assembled shouted, "God save the King." Thus the
olive branch was cast aside, King and Parliament were divided, and
the royal sanction given to the wasting calamity of war--war that was
to determine whether the monarchical or the democratic estate of the
kingdom should possess the ruling power, and in which the best and
bravest blood of England was to be shed.