CHAPTER VI.

DISLEY--A MAY DAY AT LYME--LYME HALL AND THE LEGHS.

Lyme! What a host of memories are conjured up on the very mention of

the name! What a world of legend and tradition; what tales of love

and gramarye, of chivalry and romance gather round. To cross the

threshold of the old mansion is to step back into the shade of vanished

centuries; the spirit of the past breathes through the place; and as

you pace the tapestried halls and panelled chambers visions of Crescy,

of Poictiers, and of Agincourt float before the eye, for the lords of

Lyme--men

Stout of heart and steady of hand--

bore their part in many a gallant exploit and in many a daring

enterprise in the stirring times of the Edwards and the Henrys. Their

dwelling place is a perpetual reminder of the England of yore, and,

though its history may be more associated with peace and hospitality

than with predatory war and feudal strife, the storied and poetical

associations that are interwoven with its annals place it in the

forefront of the historic homes of which the fair and fertile county of

Chester possesses so many notable examples. Placed, too, in a district

remarkable for its natural beauty, and on the very border-land of that

great storehouse of English scenery--the Peak of Derbyshire--and withal

within easy distance of the great hives of manufacturing industry,

no wonder that it should have become one of the favourite resorts of

holiday makers.

Why don't those acred sirs

Throw up their parks some dozen times a year,

And let the people breathe?

asks the Poet Laureate, in a spirit that savours of reproach; but here

at least his desire has been anticipated, for by the kindness and

liberality of the present worthy representative of the ancient lords

of Lyme, not only the park, but the state apartments, with their many

historic mementoes, are made accessible alike to peer and peasant, a

welcome boon to the sons and daughters of toil, who may obtain health

and amusement beneath the tall patrician trees, and intellectual

enjoyment in the contemplation of the valued heirlooms and countless

treasures that the mansion enshrines.

[Illustration: LYME HALL.]

Disley is a convenient starting point for our visit; it is within a

mile of the park gates, and can be easily reached by road or rail; it

possesses, too, one of the pleasantest and cosiest inns in the kingdom,

and that, to say the least, is a recommendation. The "Ram's Head,"

for that is the name, was a noted house of entertainment long ere

the shrill whistle of the locomotive had broken in upon the peaceful

quietude of this happy valley or a "line" had been thought of. It is a

relic of the pleasant old coaching days when the well-appointed Derby

"mail" was an institution, and old Burdett, gorgeously apparelled

in gold lace and scarlet, awoke the echoes with his bugle to the

heart-stirring strains of "The girl I left behind me." Unlike many of

its contemporaries, however, it still retains its popularity, and is

in as high favour as ever, if we may judge from the numerous pic-nic

and pleasure parties, the field flirtations, and what our Yankee

cousins irreverently term "bug-hunters," who avail themselves of its

hospitality. The house stands away back from the road, with the crest

of the Leghs (the ram's head) carved in stone over its ample portal,

and in the rear is an old-fashioned but pleasant and well-trimmed

garden that a month hence will display quite a world of floral

beauty--a tranquil resting place where, beneath the spreading trees

or in the quiet shadowy nooks, you can calmly contemplate the natural

charms of the surrounding scenery.

Very inviting is the open door of the old hostelrie, but it is the

ancestral home of the Leghs that claims our attention at the present

moment, and we are not to be lured from our purpose.

The time of our visit is a bright sunny afternoon, and the month that

one proverbial for its mirth and gladness; the one of which Milton

sings--

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

A road leads up from the end of the hotel, and crowning the summit of

a gentle eminence that rises on the left is the church, an antiquated

structure, grey with the weather strains of more than three centuries,

with an embattled tower and a curious porch that looks like an

excrescence projecting from the front of it. It was originally a

chantry chapel, dedicated to "Our Lady," and built in the earlier part

of the Eighth Harry's reign by Sir Piers Legh, of Lyme, a gentleman,

a soldier, and a priest, in atonement, as was long believed, and as

popular tradition still affirms, for his having slain Sir Thomas

Butler, of Bewsey; though trustworthy antiquaries of modern times

assure us there is no foundation for the story, inasmuch as Sir Thomas

had yielded up the ghost before Sir Piers was born. But this is an age

of scepticism and unbelief, a time when our most cherished fancies

are in peril of being dispelled by the prosaic logic of facts and the

ruthless researches of unimaginative Dryasdusts, who would take as much

delight in proving the Swan of Avon to be an impostor as they do in

proclaiming that Robin Hood was a myth and "Cinderella and her slipper"

only a Scandinavian conception.

A history

Handed from ages down; a nurse's tale

Which children opened-eyed and mouth'd devour,

And thus, as garrulous ignorance relates,

We learn it and believe.

The interior of the church well deserves inspection. There are some

mementoes of the Leghs though none of ancient date, and the usual

complement of sepulchral memorials. There are also some interesting

examples of old foreign stained glass, collected by the late Thomas

Legh, and placed here in lieu of some of heraldic character that were

at the same time removed to the hall, where they may still be seen.

But we must defer our examination of the old edifice for another

opportunity.

For some little distance the road runs parallel with the railway, which

lies below us on the right, and from our elevated position we can

overlook the village and the wild expanse of country environed with the

long ridges of bleak moorland that stretch away to the Peak country.

Though May has come in, there is a chilliness in the atmosphere that

reminds us that we have not yet done with the east winds Charles

Kingsley affected to delight in, but the coldness is tempered by the

warm sunbeams which steal down between the ponderous white cloud peaks

that sail majestically overhead, looking like floating islands in an

azure sea. What a change the refreshing rains of the last few days have

brought about; it seems as if nature had undergone a transformation;

Mother Earth has cast aside her russet robe and donned a mantle of

brightest emerald. The fruit trees against yon garden wall are just

beginning to put forth their snow-white petals, safe we would hope now

from being, as is too often the case--

Nipp'd by the lagging rear of winter's frost.

On the wooded bank that rises from the opposite side of the pool which

the railway intersects there is abundant evidence that the green is

asserting itself over the grey, for--

The dark pine-wood's boughs are seen

Fringed tenderly with living green.

The oaks and the ash trees are almost as black and bare as they were in

the depth of winter, and there are dark, unrelieved patches here and

there, but the golden palm-like foliage depending in graceful festoons

from the tall spines of the larches show with distinct vividness;

whilst the luminous, almost golden, yellow of the poplars is contrasted

by the sombre brown of the limes and birches, whose budding twigs have

not yet

Spread out their fan

To catch the breezy air.

Presently the road descends, and we continue along a wild old wandering

gipsy-haunted lane that looks like an avenue in places where the trees

almost meet overhead; the sun-light falls in leafy shadows and works

a flickering pattern on every foot of the causeway, and the broad

strips of grass on either side encroach upon it as if striving for

the mastery. On the sloping meadow breadths the daisy--"day's eye,"

as the poets loved to call it--with its "golden bosom fringed with

snow," displays a little galaxy of star blossoms, and helps to remind

us of Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women;" of the unfortunate Margaret of

Anjou, who chose it as her device, and whose nobles in the sunshine of

her prosperity wore it embroidered upon their robes; and of another

Margaret--she of Valois, the friend of Erasmus and of Calvin, the

Marguerite of Marguerites, who had it worn in her honour. On the bank

sides and beneath the hedgerows the

Dewcup of the frail anemone

peeps above the wreck of last year's vegetation. Here and there the

pale primrose may also be seen lifting its delicate blossoms to the

passing zephyrs, that prettiest of woodland flowers that folds its

shamrock-shaped leaves when "the storm sings in the wind;" the wood

sorrel--Alleluya, as the apothecaries of old times were wont to call

it--studs the high banks, and if we thrust aside the tall grass and the

crumpled leaves and withered bracken that yet remain we may see the

young ferns unfolding their Corinthian scrolls.

The sun seems to have the same influence on the birds that it has

on leaf and blossom. Every bush and thicket is vocal. Perched on

the topmost twig of a spreading lime a thrush makes the welkin ring

again with his mellifluous lay, challenging like a troubadour of old

the admiration of his lady love, who makes responsive call from her

nest near by; and high overhead--a speck in the blue above--a lark

rains down his "harmonious madness;" the plaintive wail--"pewit,

pewit"--comes clear and strong from the white-breasted plover, anxious

to distract our attention from its nest in the thick grass, and from

the distant copse the soft, mysterious, dreamy note of the cuckoo

proclaims that the long looked for harbinger of summer has at last

arrived.

O! Cuckoo, shall I call thee bird,

Or but a wandering voice?

Presently our ears are assailed by the merry voices of children, and a

troop of youngsters come struggling through a gap in the fence, laden

with buttercups and daisies, and laughing and crowing with infantile

delight, as they bear their floral treasures away.

A few minutes brings us to the lodge entrance. Here the road forks, and

passing through the gate we wind away towards the left, mounting the

upper slopes as we advance. To the right the ground falls away, and

in the hollow, between us and Elmer Hurst, a tiny rindle threads its

way, after performing some little industrial service at the mill higher

up. Across the green expanse there is a good sprinkling of trees, oaks

and thorns, some of them aged, and wrinkled and weather-beaten enough

to have borne the blasts of centuries; lime trees too are plentiful,

sufficient to suggest the idea that they had given name to the place,

did we not know that the true derivation was from the limes,--_i.e._,

the limits or confines of the county. Eastwards the ground rises in

hilly ridges, backed by great treeless wastes of moorland that rise and

fall like the heaving billows of a tempestous sea suddenly arrested in

their motion--a picture of bleak desolation, the dreariness of which is

only relieved by a few patches of plantation, or a clump of storm-rent

pines here and there dotting their heathy slopes. The green expanse

before us lacks the fertility and richness of detail the southerner is

accustomed to, and, when we remember that the park forms part of what

was once the great forest of Macclesfield, we are apt to think that

the forests of those days but ill accorded with our notions of what a

forest should be.

As we round the shoulder of a grassy slope, Lyme Cage comes in sight--a

square, grey, tower-like structure of stone, crowning an eminence on

the left, that rises to the height of eight hundred and eighty-two

feet It is three storeys high, and flanked at each angle with square

projections that rise above the roof in the form of turrets, and is

surmounted by a cornice and open balustrade. The building is now

occupied as a dwelling by one of the shepherds; when it was built, or

for what purpose, is not known with certainty, but in all probability

it was originally designed, like the hunting tower at Chatsworth, as a

place where the ladies of Lyme might enjoy the pleasures of the chase

without danger or fatigue, though tradition, which delights in the

tragic, assigns a different origin, and, reckoning back its history

for centuries, tells us that it was designed for the incarceration of

offenders against the forest laws when Lyme Chase was in its glory,

and its owners gave short shrift to those who made too free with their

venison. The Cage forms a prominent landmark, and from the summit

a delightful prospect is obtained in a westerly direction of the

great Cheshire plain--a broad, picturesque panorama of villages and

undulating meadows and pastures, including the high grounds of Alderley

and Bowdon, and extending, when the day is clear, to the Frodsham Hills

and Chester, and the line of Welsh mountains beyond. Northward, where

the smoke overhangs the landscape, is Stockport, and sweeping round,

we catch sight of the tower of Marple Old Church--the new church has

not yet got its tower completed--standing, sentinel-like, on the summit

of a lofty ridge, and the shadowy peak of Kinderscout--the highest

point of the Peak range--rising far behind; while eastwards the view

is shut in by Whaley Moor, and the long range of heathery wastes and

lonely promontories that enclose the picturesque valley of the Goyt.

The sunlight reveals every inequality and every indention that time and

storm have furrowed down the hillsides; it brings out, too, an infinite

variety of colour that adds an ineffable charm, and we can note the

changing effects of the cloud-shadows, as they slowly chase each other

across the broad and breezy expanse. A few sheep are cropping the

herbage on the uplands, and the "full-uddered kine" are grazing upon

the sunny slopes, and luxuriating in the lush pastures below; but the

wild cattle for which Lyme was once so famous, are nowhere to be seen,

the few that still survive being herded in another and more secluded

part of the park.

The Lyme cattle, by the way, deserve a passing note, for, like the

Lyme mastiffs, they are accounted among the peculiarities of Cheshire.

Thirty years ago there was a considerable number of them, but since

then, from various causes, the stock has been reduced, until now only

very few remain, and there is danger that they may at no distant date

become extinct, a circumstance that would be much to be regretted.

These ancient British wild cattle are indigenous, and for centuries

past have formed one of the features of Lyme; they are of a sand white

colour, with red ears, and in some respects resemble the wild cattle

at Chillingham and Chartley, and those at Gisburne, in Yorkshire.

Unfortunately little is known about them, but from their peculiarities

of form and their immense strength they are evidently of the buffalo

type. They are untameable, and could never be brought to herd with the

other cattle in the park, though occasionally cross breeds have been

obtained, and so unmanageable are they that no keeper can ever approach

them, a rifle being necessary whenever they have to be slaughtered for

the table. These wild bovines are not, however, without their uses,

for it is said that that part of the park in which they are placed,

though literally overrun with game, is always secure from the predatory

incursions of the poacher.

A treatise on natural history is not, however, our present theme, and

so we resume our journeying. The birds are all alive, and are looking

alive too, with no end of business which they are striving to get

through with all possible alacrity. On the sunny sward below a company

of rooks are grubbing away with commendable diligence, gathering food

for their young offspring at home. A many-wintered crow who long has

"led the clanging rookery home" sits aloft in a tree to give warning of

the approach of danger; with quick eye he watches our movements, and

as they are pronounced unsatisfactory, the alarm is sounded, when, in

an instant, every bird is upon the wing and off in search of pastures

new, with a sonorous, dignified cawing that sounds like a chorus of

corvine laughter, contrasting oddly with the pert, consequential

"jackle" of a self-assertive jackdaw who has attached himself to

the community. The green expanses around us, if wanting somewhat in

fertility, possess a charm in their natural wildness, and the bright

sunlight adds to the sense of beauty. As we advance we notice a few

rugged thorns by the wayside that have already put on their attire

of fresh green leaves, but the ash trees close by are still nude,

reminding us of the poet's pretty imagery--

Delaying, as the tender ash delays

To clothe itself when all the woods are green;

and we begin to furbish up our weather wisdom, and speculate as to

whether it or the oak will leaf first, for, as the knowing ones tell

us--

If the oak's before the ash,

We shall only get a splash;

If the ash precede the oak,

We shall surely get a soak.

A few minutes more and we come to a bend in the road, and then the

stately mansion of Lyme, with its long lofty front, unexpectedly bursts

upon the view, lying in a deep wooded hollow, and sheltered from the

winds by the encircling hills.

Lyme Park was originally included within the bounds of the royal forest

of Macclesfield--a vast tract of country that comprised little of wood

and much of wilderness--and so continued until the time of Richard II.,

when it was granted to an ancestor of its present owner. Common report

says there was a house here as early as the reign of King John, but the

story is unsupported by any existing evidence; if there were a dwelling

at all it could only have been a kind of hunting lodge. Certainly

there was no "faire hall" existing before the close of the fourteenth

century, and the earliest mention we have is in a Rental of the manor

in 1466, when there was said to be "one fair hall with a high chamber,

a kitchen, a bakehouse, and a brewhouse, with a granary, stable, and

bailiff's house, and a fair park surrounded by palings, and divers

fields and hays (_i.e._, hedged enclosures)" of the value of £10 a year.

There is a widespread belief that the manor of Lyme was granted to

Sir Piers Legh, commonly called Perkyn a Legh, for his good services

at the battle of Crescy, where he is said to have taken prisoner the

Count de Tankerville, the Chamberlain of France, and to have relieved

the standard of the Black Prince when it was in danger of being

captured by the enemy. But as Piers Legh, to whom, with his wife, the

grant was made, was not born until 1361, fifteen years after Crescy

was fought, it is tolerably certain that he could not have rendered

any very distinguished services on that memorable occasion. Yet the

story is generally credited. Like many another popular legend, it has

floated down through the mists of centuries and become distorted in

its transmission through various media. Everybody believes it, and

the domestics who show you over the house accept it as unimpeachable

history, which to doubt, even, would be rank heresy. They repeat the

tradition with variations, with many embellishments, and not a few

anachronisms; tell you how the valorous Perkyn a Legh cut down the

standard-bearer of the King of France, for that is the popular version,

and, if you venture to hint a doubt as to whether that functionary

ever was annihilated, will show you the heraldic device of the arm

and banner emblazoned on ceiling, wall, and window, and point with

confidence and pardonable pride to the armour Sir Perkyn wore on that

eventful day, to the golden spurs which the Black Prince gave him when

he knighted him upon the field, and, more than all, to the veritable

sword, a huge, two-handled blade, with which the doughty deed was

done--in their eyes confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ. This

usually settles the business, even if it fails to carry conviction,

though upon one occasion we remember a facetious unbeliever, taking up

the ponderous weapon and the parable, exclaiming in the nasal twang

which sight-showers seem to think indispensable--

This is the sword of Perkyn a Legh,

A blade both true and trusty,

That Frenchman's blood was ne'er wiped off;

Which makes it look so rusty--

when the stately cicerone strode out of the room, evidently offended at

his unbecoming levity.

Poor old Flower, Norroy King of Arms, we fear has much to answer for

in giving the stamp of his authority to, and thus perpetuating the

fable. But in the days of the maiden Queen the heralds were somewhat

credulous genealogists, and much less exacting than their predecessors

in the stirring times of the Plantagenet Kings. In 1575, during his

"visitation" of Cheshire, Flower was a guest at Lyme, when, influenced

possibly by the sumptuous hospitality of his entertainer, he not only

allowed the then lord of Lyme the arms his progenitors had borne, but

added to them an honourable augmentation in the shape of "an escucheon

or shield of augmentacon Sable, replenished with mollets Silver,

therein a man's arme bowed, holding in the hand a standard Silver, to

be by the sayd Piers and his posterity for ever hereafter borne and to

be used as a testimony of his ancestour's good deserts." The "shield

of augmentacon," which we now see so profusely displayed at Lyme, was

a handsome and well-merited addition to the coat armour of the family,

but the garrulous old herald--he was then approaching eighty--in

granting it, unfortunately repeated the old story, which ascribed to

Sir Piers Legh, instead of to his wife's father, Sir Thomas D'Anyers,

the valorous deeds by which Lyme was won, and on the strength of that

grant Sir Peter added the following lines to the inscription on the

monumental brass of his ancestor, which may still be seen in the Lyme

Chapel in Macclesfield Church:--

This Perkin serv'd King Edward the Third and the Black Prince his

sonne in all their warres in France and was at the Battle of Cressie,

and had Lyme given him for that service.

Raphael Hollinshead, the chronicler, a Cheshire man and a contemporary

of Flower, in his work, published in 1577, repeats the statement with

much circumstantial detail and an equal lack of accuracy. Describing

the scene on that glorious August day, he says:--

When the Constable [of France] understood the good will of the people

of the town [to go forth and fight the English outside the town] he

was contented to allow them to follow their desire and so forth they

went in good order, and made good face to put their lives in hazard;

but when they saw the Englishmen approach in good order divided into

three battles, and the archers ready to shoot, which they of Caen had

not seen before, they were sore afraid and fled away toward the town,

without any order or array, for all that the constable could do to

stay them. The Englishmen followed, and in the chase slew many and

entered the town with their enemies. The Constable and the Earl of

Tancarville betook themselves to a tower at the bridge-foot, thinking

there to save themselves; but perceiving the place to be of no force,

nor able to hold out long, they submitted themselves unto Sir Thomas

Holland.

But here he adds:

Whatsoever Froissart doth report of the taking of this tower, and the

yielding of these two noble men, it is to be proved that the said

Earl of Tancarville was taken by one surnamed Legh, ancestor to Sir

Peter Legh now [1577] living, whether in the fight or in the tower,

I have not to say; but for the taking of the said Earl and for his

other manlike prowess showed there and elsewhere in this journey, King

Edward in recompense of his agreeable service, gave to him a lordship

in the county of Chester, called Hanley [Lyme Handley] which the said

Sir Peter Legh now living doth enjoy and possess as successor and heir

to his ancestor, the foresaid Legh, to whom it was so first given.[50]

It is curious how many different versions of this notable incident in

England's greatest victory have been given by the old chroniclers, and

what a cloud of doubt and mystery they have in consequence created.

To the statement that Sir Piers was present at Crescy, Dugdale adds

that he acted as standard bearer to the Black Prince on that memorable

occasion; equally fallacious is the statement given in Gregson's

"Lancashire Fragments" that the augmentation was an honourable addition

after the battle of Poictiers, in which he served under the Black

Prince, for that battle was fought in 1356, five years before he was

born, and two years after Sir Thomas D'Anyers had been laid in his

grave. Gregson's statement was doubtless made on the authority of an

old pedigree still preserved among the muniments of Lyme, and which,

after representing him as receiving a free gift of Lyme and Hanley,

for his valuable services at Poictiers, makes a curious mistake by

assigning an erroneous day and year as that on which the battle was

fought. It is somewhat remarkable that Froissart, who was a witness of

many of the scenes he describes, and probably bore a part in the fight

at Crescy, makes no mention of either Piers Legh or his father-in-law,

Sir Thomas D'Anyers, but ascribes the capture of the Earl of

Tankerville to Sir Thomas Holland, a Lancashire knight. He says:--

When the French were put to flight, the English, who spared none, made

great havoc among them, which, when the Constable of France, the Earl

of Tancarville, and those with them, who had taken refuge within the

city gate, saw, they began to fear lest they themselves should fall

into the hands of some of the English archers who did not know them.

Seeing, therefore, a knight named Sir Thomas Holland, who had but one

eye (whom they had formerly known in Prussia and Grenada), coming

towards them in company with five or six other knights, they called to

him and asked him if he would take them as his prisoners. Upon which

Sir Thomas and his company advanced to the gate, and dismounting,

ascended to the top with sixteen others, where he found the Constable

and the Earl and twenty-five more who surrendered themselves to Sir

Thomas.[51]

[Illustration: WINDMILL AT CRESCY.]

The omission of D'Anyers name may be accounted for by the fact that Sir

Thomas Holland, who had married the heiress of Edmund Plantagent--Joan,

"The Fair Maid of Kent," the future wife of the Black Prince--had a

chief command in the Prince's army, and that Sir Thomas D'Anyers, who,

we know, was in the retinue of the gallant young Prince, his engagement

to serve being dated 18th May, 1346, may be assumed to have been in

Sir Thomas Holland's company, and therefore one of those who ascended

the tower and received the Earl of Tankerville's surrender. One thing

is very certain; it was at Caen and not at Crescy that the French

King's Chamberlain was captured, though it was at the last named place

that the stalwart warrior, with his strong right arm, drove back the

advancing host, and rescued the standard of the "Boy Prince"--his

palatine earl--at the time when King Edward watched his exploits from a

neighbouring height, refused his succour, and with more chivalry than

sound generalship "bade his boy win his spurs and the honour of the day

for himself." Amid all this conflicting evidence, there is one document

that has been unearthed by Mr. Beamont, in which the services of Sir

Thomas D'Anyers are duly recognised--the original record of the grant

of land, made jointly to Sir Peter Legh and Margaret, his wife, which

appears on the Cheshire Recognisance Rolls, now preserved in the Rolls

Office, London, of which the following is a translation:--

Letters patent to Piers de Legh and Margaret his wife of a certain

piece of land called Hanley.

Richard, by the grace of God, King, &c. To all to whom these presents

shall come greeting. Know ye that whereas our well-beloved squire

Piers de Legh and Margaret his wife the daughter and heir of Sir

Thomas D'Anyers, Knight, deceased, have made known to us that our most

honourable lord and father, whom God asoyle, for the good and gracious

service which the said Thomas had rendered to him, not only by taking

prisoner the Chamberlain de Tankerville, but also by rescuing our

said father's standard at the battle of Crescy; by his letters patent

had granted to the said Thomas forty marks a year out of his manor of

Frodsham in the county of Chester, at the feasts of the Annunciation

of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Michael in equal portions, until

our said father should provide him the aforesaid Thomas with lands of

the value of £20 a year in some convenient place, to have and to hold

to him and his heirs for ever as in the said letters patent of our

said lord and father is more fully contained; the which said annuity

of forty marks, after the death of the said Thomas, came into our

hands (to pay) before any grant of the aforesaid £20 in lands or any

part thereof, had been made him according to the tenor of our said

father's grant, as the aforesaid Piers and Margaret have given us to

understand. Wherefore of our special grace and in consideration as

well of what has been recited, as of the good and gracious service

which the said Piers hath rendered and will render to us, and because

the aforesaid Piers and Margaret are willing to give the said letters

patent of our said father of the said annuity of forty marks to the

said Thomas into our Exchequer at Chester to be cancelled We have

given and granted to the said Piers and the aforesaid Margaret his

wife a piece of land and pasture called Hanley, lying in our Forest

of Macclesfield in the county of Chester, which aforetime was let to

farm at twenty marks a year, as we are given to understand. To have

and to hold the same to the aforesaid Piers and Margaret his wife

and the heirs male of their bodies lawfully begotten, of us and our

heirs by the payment of six pence to us and our heirs yearly at the

feast of St. Michael the Archangel for all service in satisfaction

of the said £20 of land and notwithstanding that the said piece of

land is situated within the demesne of our forest aforesaid. Saving

altogether to us and our heirs all oaks growing there, and also

sufficient pasture for our deer there, as much as to the extent of

land within our forest aforesaid appertaineth. In testimony whereof we

have caused these our letters patent to be sealed with the seal of our

Exchequer at Chester. Dated at Chester the fourth day of January in

the twenty-first year of our reign (1398) By writ of Privy Seal.

In this grant we have incontrovertible evidence of the real hero whose

achievements in arms are commemorated on the armorial shield of the

Leghs, of Lyme, in itself a notable illustration of the true character

and intent of heraldic blazonry. Sir Thomas D'Anyers, who bore himself

so bravely at Caen as well as on the field at Crescy, when, if popular

story is to be believed, "villainous saltpetre" was first employed and

the roar of artillery first heard, fighting by the side of the gallant

prince--

Who on the French ground play'd a tragedy,

Making defeat on the full power of France;

Whilst his most mighty father on a hill

Stood smiling to behold his lion's whelp

Forage in blood of French nobility--

was the representative of a family who owned lands at Bradley, in

Appleton. William D'Anyers, who, in 1291, purchased lands in Daresbury

from Henry de Norreys, married Agnes, daughter of Agnes, heir of

Richard de Legh, of High Legh, by the first of her three husbands,

Richard, younger son of Hugh de Limme, who took the name of Legh after

his marriage. By him she had, in addition to a son, William D'Anyers,

of Daresbury, Thomas D'Anyers, of Bradley, in Appleton, who, by his

first wife, Margaret, daughter of Adam de Tabley, was the father of

Sir Thomas D'Anyers, the hero of Crescy, and also of John D'Anyers,

of Gropenhall, a soldier who for his services, likewise received a

grant from the Crown. Sir Thomas D'Anyers, who must have been early

initiated in the exercise of arms, was twice married; by his first

wife, Matilda, he had no surviving issue, and at her death he married

Isabel, the daughter and heir of Sir William de Baguley and his wife,

Clemence, daughter and co-heir of Sir Roger Chedle, _alias_ Sir Roger

Dutton, of Chedle in Cheshire, who survived him, and by whom he had

an only daughter, Margaret, who became his heir. After the battle of

Crescy he appears to have retired to his house at Bradley, but the

laurels he had won in his campaigns abroad had helped to shorten his

days, and in 1354, while yet comparatively young, he was carried to the

grave, having predeceased his father. An inquisition was taken after

his death of the lands he held, and the jury found that his daughter,

whose name they did not know, was his next heir. His estate, which

was never at any time large, had not improved during his absences in

the wars, and Margaret D'Anyers, who at the time of his death could

only have been very young, succeeded to an inheritance that had become

considerably attenuated, for in an extent of the manor the jurors

found that "the messuage (Bradley Hall), with its enclosures, which

had belonged to Sir Thomas, in Bradley, with the gardens there, was

not worth anything; that the dove-house was not worth anything, being

destroyed by a weasel; that the fishery in the moat round the house was

not worth anything, being destroyed by an otter; but that there were

two carucates of land there containing sixty acres, worth sixpence an

acre."

Margaret D'Anyers, who was doubly an heiress, having inherited Clifton,

Gropenhall, and a moiety of Chedle from her mother, was three times

wooed and won. Shortly after her father's death she was taken from her

mother by John de Radcliffe, who had obtained a grant of her marriage,

and eventually married her himself. There was no issue of the union,

and their married life must have been short, for before the month of

April, 1382, he had died, and she had again bestowed her hand, her

second husband being Sir John Savage, of Clifton. By him she had a

son, John Savage, to whom, in 1415, she granted the heraldic coat of

D'Anyers, without any difference, together with the white unicorn's

head, the crest of her father--a coat he might well be proud of,

though it was in reality that which his ancestress, Agnes de Legh,

had inherited from her father, Richard de Limme, with the tinctures

changed--and this coat continued to be borne by the Savages down

to the reign of Elizabeth.[52] Sir John Savage died about the year

1387, and in the following year negotiations were set on foot for a

marriage between his widow and Piers, younger son of Robert de Legh, of

Adlington, by his second wife, Maud, daughter and heiress of Sir Adam

de Norley. As they were within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity,

Piers de Legh being descended from Agnes de Legh, by her third husband,

William Venables, and his intended bride from the same Agnes, by her

first husband, Richard de Limme, a dispensation for the marriage was

deemed necessary. This instrument, which bears date November 26th,

1388, was "given in the house of the Carmelite brethren at London," and

within a few days of its being granted Margaret D'Anyers, successively

the widow of Sir John Radcliffe and Sir John Savage, had become the

wife of her kinsman, Piers Legh. Piers Legh was then twenty-seven

years of age, and his wife, if not fat, fair, and forty, had at all

events reached her thirty-ninth year. They became--he on the paternal,

she on the maternal side--the founders of the house of Legh, of Lyme.

Piers Legh's mother, as already stated, was the heiress of Sir Adam de

Norley, the owner of the manor of that name in Lancashire, and she in

her husband's lifetime had executed a deed conveying all her estates

in trust for the benefit of her son upon his coming of age, and, in

accordance with the custom of the time, Piers Legh on succeeding to his

mother's inheritance relinquished his paternal coat and assumed that of

Norley--_gules_, a cross engrailed _argent_, which has ever since been

borne by the Leghs of Lyme, with the addition since Elizabeth's reign

of the escutcheon of pretence, which old Flower, the herald, gave them.

Cheshire, which plumes itself on being "the seedplot of nobility,"

and of possessing a greater number of old county families than any

other English shire, boasts no worthier or more ancient stock than the

Leghs; their history is closely interwoven with the history of the

palatinate, and they claim a high antiquity, tracing their descent in

this country back to the time of the Conquest, when an ancestor came

over in the retinue of Duke William, the Norman invader. The Leghs of

Adlington, of which house was Piers Legh, the founder of the house

of Lyme, were descended from Gilbert or le Galliard, the younger son

of Eudo or Eules, the second of that name, Earl of Blois, Byre, and

Chartres, and the ancestor of Stephen, Earl of Blois, who, on the death

of Henry I., usurped the English crown. This Gilbert, who from the

patronymic he adopted, Venables (_venator abilis_), we may assume to

have been a mighty hunter, was in the retinue of William of Normandy,

and for his bravery at Hastings was knighted by the Conqueror upon the

battle-field. Afterwards, he had considerable estates bestowed upon

him out of the newly-conquered country in requital of his services

against Edgar Atheling and the Welsh, and when that singular compound

of sensuality and ferocity, Hugh D'Avranches, more generally known

as Hugh Lupus, the Conqueror's nephew, was made Earl Palatine of

Chester, he conferred upon Gilbert Venables the barony of Kinderton.

Sir William Venables, the sixth in descent from this Gilbert, had a

younger son, also named William, to whom he gave the manor of Bradwell,

near Sandbach. William Venables, the younger, was twice married, his

second wife being Agnes, the daughter and heir of Richard de Legh,

of the West Hall, in High Legh, and the widow of Richard de Limme or

Lymm, the common ancestress of the Leghs of Adlington and the D'Anyers

of Bradley. Their son, John de Venables, adopted the name of Legh,

the maiden name of his mother, as well as of the place where he was

born. He married Ellen de Corona, the great-aunt of Thomas de Corona,

the last of the family of that name, who owned the extensive manor of

Adlington, and about the year 1299 he purchased the estate of Norbury

Booths, near Knutsford, where he fixed his residence. Thomas de Corona

does not appear ever to have married; certainly he had no issue, and

before his death he settled his estates, when, by an agreement made

at Chester, October 7th, 1315, and another dated at "le Bouthes" in

the following year, he granted all his lands at Adlington, after his

death, to his grand-niece Ellen and her husband, John Legh, for their

lives, with remainder to their son, Robert de Legh. Thomas de Corona

died about the year 1323, and John Legh must have pre-deceased him, for

at the time Ellen de Corona was a widow, and obtained the grant of a

pardon from Isabella, queen of Edward II., who styled herself "Lady of

Macclesfield," and who had claimed Adlington that it was held of her as

of her manor of Macclesfield, and had been alienated without licence.

Ellen Legh survived her husband for the long period of twenty-seven

years, and continued in the enjoyment of the manor of Adlington,

which had been re-granted to her on the purchase of the pardon before

referred to, until her death in 1350, when her son, Robert de Legh,

succeeded, in accordance with Thomas de Corona's settlement, and became

the ancestor of a family whose direct male heirs held the manor of

Adlington for the long period of four hundred years. Robert de Legh

was twice married, his first wife being Sybil, daughter of Henry de

Honford, of Handforth, and after her death he espoused Matilda, the

daughter and heiress of Sir Adam de Norley, of Norley or Northleigh,

in Lancashire, who, according to an old MS. pedigree, was his second

cousin and very much his junior. The eldest of the two sons of this

second marriage was Piers Legh, who, as previously stated, in 1388

became the third husband of his kinswoman, Margaret, daughter and heir

of Sir Thomas D'Anyers, the hero of Crescy, and the widow successively

of Sir John Radcliffe and Sir John Savage, and from them descended the

Leghs of Lyme and the Leghs of Ridge, near Macclesfield.

Concerning the mother of Piers Leigh, an incident is recorded which

puts her character in an unfavourable light. Robert de Leigh, her

husband, before his death settled certain of his lands in Broome, near

Lymm (not Lyme, as is sometimes supposed,), upon two of his sons by his

first marriage. He died about the year 1370, and five years afterwards

his widow was indicted for having, in conjunction with one Thomas Le

Par, forged a settlement in the name of Adam de Kingsley, the trustee,

in fraud of her two stepsons and in favour of her own son, Piers Leigh,

and his two younger brothers.

Piers Leigh was a person of considerable importance, and held many

offices of trust and responsibility. Shortly after his coming of age,

in 1382, he was, with his brother John, appointed by Joan, Princess

of Wales, once the "Fair Maid of Kent," and the widow of Edward the

Black Prince, bailiff of her Manor of Macclesfield, and steward of all

her courts within the hundred and forest, an office his father held

previously. In the following year he obtained a lease of the herbage

of Hanley within the forest, and was entrusted by the Princess with

the conduct of her affairs with other of her tenants within the manor

and forest. In the following year he had a lease of the herbage of the

forest of Macclesfield, and about the same time, the Princess Joan

being then dead, he and his brother John were appointed attorneys to

serve for the surveyor of the forest of Macclesfield.

In 1387, Richard II., who had then been ten years upon the throne,

attained his majority. A self-willed youth, impatient of the restraint

which had been imposed upon him while under the guardianship of his

three uncles, the Dukes of Lancaster (John o' Gaunt), York, and

Gloucester, he determined to free himself from their control. With a

view of ingratiating himself with his Cheshire subjects, between whom

and the sovereign, from the time when a king's son was first created

palatine earl, there had been a close relationship, he made a progress

into the county and remained some time at Chester, where he received

many marks of popular favour. He confirmed many of the Cheshire men

in the offices and emoluments previously conferred upon them by his

uncle, John o' Gaunt, who was Constable of Chester and Lord of Halton,

and amongst other things confirmed to Piers Leigh the annuity of Cs,

which had been made to him by John o' Gaunt's son-in-law, John de

Holland. In the following year, however, Piers Legh had the misfortune

to fall under the King's displeasure. In that year the real struggle

between Richard and his uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, began. Under the

pretence of removing the King's favourites, and especially Robert de

Vere, Earl of Oxford, whom he had created Duke of Ireland--one of the

five obnoxious members who had met at Nottingham, and all of whom had

been accused of treason before the King at Westminster--he assembled

an army at Highgate, whereupon De Vere fled into the north, and on

the authority of the Royal letters summoned the Cheshire forces, and

with them, and some auxiliaries from Lancashire, numbering in all

about 5,000 men, set out to meet him. The two armies encountered each

other at Radcot Bridge, in Oxfordshire, on the 20th of December, and

a battle was fought in which the soldiers of the Duke of Ireland were

completely routed. The Duke himself only escaped by swimming the Isis,

and fled to the north, whence he sought refuge in the Low Countries.

Piers Legh would seem either to have shared in the general indignation

against De Vere, or to have been brought under the influence of the

Duke of Gloucester, for he immediately seized the whole of the Duke

of Ireland's movables in Cheshire and lodged them in Chester Castle.

Angered at this treatment of his fallen favourite, the humiliated

King issued his warrant, dated January 21st, 1388, commanding Piers

Legh, under a penalty of £1,000, to surrender and restore the goods he

had taken. Whether the mandate was obeyed and the goods and chattels

restored is not stated, but probably the difficulty was removed by the

death of De Vere, which occurred shortly afterwards.

While these events were transpiring negotiations were set on foot for

a marriage, for which a dispensation was obtained, the contracting

parties being, as stated, related in the fourth as well as the third

degree of consanguinity, and before the year had closed Piers Legh

had taken to himself a wife in the person of his kinswoman, Margaret

D'Anyers, the widow of Sir John Savage.

By this time, or shortly after, he must have regained the King's

favour, for in August, 1390, a commission was issued directing him

and others therein named to hear and determine all felonies committed

within the borough of Macclesfield, and a second commission empowered

him to determine in like manner all felonies, misdemeanours, and

breaches of the peace committed within the forest and hundred of

Macclesfield. At that time the forest comprised about one-third of the

entire hundred, and included within its limits the larger portion of

the great parish of Prestbury. It had belonged to the Earls of Chester

until the extinction of the local earldom in 1237, when it passed to

the Crown, and was thereafter reserved for the Royal hunting and made

subject to the forest laws, which were very severe against any who

should presume to make free with the King's venison--the killing of a

deer being accounted an offence as serious as the killing of a man, and

punishable with equal severity.

A further evidence of the renewed confidence of the King is found in

the fact that on the 6th April, 1391, Piers Legh was appointed by

the Queen Consort--"the good Queen Anne," as she was called by the

people--steward of her lands in the Macclesfield Hundred. In the month

of August following, he was commanded to arrest all malefactors and

disturbers of the peace within the hundred, and made one of the King's

justices for the same, with directions to hold three courts itinerant

or _in eyre_, the proceedings at which were of the nature of those

at a court of assize, the penalty for non-attendance when summoned

thereto being outlawry, with forfeiture of goods. In January, 1395, he

was named equitator or rider of the forest, his special duties being

to attend the King in person whenever he should hunt in the forest;

and this office he had subsequently conferred upon him for life, and

also, in conjunction with his brother, that of keeper of the park of

Macclesfield.

The struggle for supremacy between Richard and his uncle, the Duke of

Gloucester, was now approaching a crisis, and, by a proceeding which

resembled very much what is known in modern times as a _coup d'état_,

he resolved to break the power of the turbulent Gloucester and his

cabal of nobles. The Duke was surprised in his castle at Plashy, in

Essex, hurried on board ship, and conveyed to Calais; at the same time

the Earl of Warwick, while enjoying the royal hospitality, was seized

and sent to Tintagel Castle, in Cornwall, and, simultaneously, and with

equal duplicity, the Earl of Arundel was summoned to a conference, and,

while there, arrested and lodged in Carisbrook Castle. A Parliament was

immediately summoned to meet at Westminster, at which the fate of the

three captive nobles--one a prince of the blood--was to be determined.

Great were the preparations made, and a wooden building of large extent

was erected near Westminster Hall for the reception of the numerous

assembly. On the 17th September, 1397, the Parliament met; the assembly

was surrounded by the King's troops, and the Sovereign himself had a

body guard, consisting mainly of his Cheshire archers, all of whom wore

his cognizance of the White Hart lodged--the badge of his mother, Joan

of Kent, which he had adopted--and there is every reason to believe

that Piers Legh held a command among the feudal retainers--the archers

of the Crown, as they were called--who rendered personal service on

that memorable occasion; memorable as the time when the chief objects

of the King's displeasure were condemned for high treason and a

despotic power established under the sanction of Parliamentary forms.

It is worthy of note that in this short-lived Parliament Cheshire was

raised to the dignity of a principality, the King adding to his titles

that of Prince of Chester; but the honour was not long enjoyed, the Act

under which it was created being repealed in the first year of Henry

the Fourth's reign.

In the following year Piers Legh had an annuity of Cs granted him by

the King, probably as a reward for his services on the occasion just

referred to, and about the same time the annuity of forty marks (£26

13s. 4d.) which had been granted to Sir Thomas D'Anyers was exchanged

for the lands in Lyme Hanley--an exchange that may be said to have been

the foundation of the fortunes of the House of Lyme.

In the succeeding year Richard had again occasion for the services of

his trusty Cheshire Archers. To avenge the death of Roger Mortimer,

Earl of March, the presumptive heir to his crown, he determined on

bringing the kingdom of Ireland to a more perfect subjection. With this

view, and for the purpose of increasing the strength of his Cheshire

guard, he had a levy made of the archers within the several hundreds

of the palatinate qualified to serve, and with these he set sail from

Milford Haven on the 4th June, 1399. While he was leading his forces

into the Irish bogs and thickets to chastise the presumption of the

native chiefs, Henry Bolingbroke, the son of the old Lancastrian

duke, John o' Gaunt, who had been banished the kingdom, landed with a

force at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, and marched southwards; castles and

towns surrendered to him, and in an incredibly short space of time he

had made himself master of half the kingdom. Rebellion had stalked

unchecked through the land for weeks before the absent monarch could

receive intelligence of Bolingbroke's designs, and ere he could reach

the English coast on his return the revolution was accomplished. On the

9th August, little more than a couple of months from the time of his

departure, he landed in Wales; a number of his faithful Cheshire men

met him on his arrival, though Piers Legh was not of the number, being

at the time in command at Chester, and this may have been the occasion

when, as the old chronicler says, the Cheshire men exclaimed--"Dycon,

slep secury quile we wake, and drede nought quile we lyve sefton; for

giff thou hadst wedded Perkyn, daughter of Lye, thou may well holde

alone day with any man in Cheshire schire, i' faith." Piers Legh's

daughter Margaret was then only in her infancy, but that must have been

a matter of small consequence in the days when children were accounted

as of marriageable age. The unhappy monarch, with a few followers,

wandered from castle to castle, and at length found a resting-place

at Conway. Meanwhile the victorious Henry was advancing by rapid

marches through Gloucester and Herefordshire towards Shrewsbury, with

the intention of occupying Chester, crying, "Havoc and destruction

on Cheshire and the Cheshire men." On the 9th August, the day that

Richard landed from Ireland, he entered the city and promised peace

to the people, a promise, however, that was to be quickly violated,

for on the next day he gave orders for the seizure of the King's

loving and loyal subject, Sir Piers Legh, who must have been actively

defending the interests of his master. Probably he had the command of

the castle, though he is said to have been at the time Chief Justice of

Chester.[53] Whatever his office his motto was _loyal à la mort_, and,

like Old Adam in "As You Like It," he might have exclaimed--

Master, go on, and I will follow thee

To the last gasp with love and loyalty.

To remove an obstacle to the accomplishment of his ambitious designs

Bolingbroke hurried him away to execution. His policy, so our greatest

dramatist tells us, was to--

Cut off the heads

Of all the favourites that the absent King

In deputation left behind him,

When he was personal in the Irish wars.

And the "absent King" had no greater favourite or more faithful

follower than Piers Legh.

The Rev. John Wall, the translator of the French Metrical History of

the Deposition of Richard II.[54] in referring to his tragic end, says

the King was at the time at Conway; and Daniel, in his "Civil Wars

between York and Lancaster," thus alludes to the event:--

Nor thou, magnanimous Legh, must not be left

In darkness; for thy rare fidelity

To save thy faith content to lose thy head,

That reverent head, of good men honoured.

By the order of Bolingbroke, the head of Sir Piers was placed on the

highest gate of the city, and there it remained for a time, when it

was removed by the Carmelite Monks and buried with his body within

their own church. Afterwards it was conveyed to Macclesfield, where,

on the south side of the Lyme chancel of the old church, the following

epitaph, once cut in stone, but now graven in brass, may still be

seen:--

Here lyeth the bodie of Perkyn a Legh

That for King Richard the death did die

Betrayed for rightevsnes

And the bones of Sir Peers his Sonne

That with King Henry the fift did wonne

In Paris.

To which, as we have previously stated, after old Flower's grant of an

heraldic augmentation, Sir Peter Legh in Elizabeth's reign added the

apocryphal inscription regarding his doings at Crescy.

For loyally serving his fallen master and King, and while yet a young

man, for he was only thirty-eight years of age, thus perished the first

of the Lords of Lyme.

The distance between the throne and the grave of a deposed monarch is

but short. Bolingbroke, finding himself everywhere enthusiastically

received, resolved upon wresting the sceptre from the feeble grasp

of his vacillating cousin, and within a few short months of the

decapitation of Piers Legh, Richard of Bordeaux had lost both his crown

and his life. When the revolution had seated the house of Lancaster

upon the throne, Richard, on relinquishing his sovereignty, expressed

the hope that his cousin would be "good lord to him," but the hope was

delusive. He was deposed in September, and ere the snows of winter had

melted his end had been accomplished, either by the pole-axe of the

assassin, or the more protracted misery of famine.

Of a verity, those were stirring times, and whatever tenure men might

have of their lands they had but little of their heads. Henry gained

the throne almost without a struggle, but his daring act of usurpation

was but the sowing of the seed which ripened and bore fruit in that

"purple testimony of bleeding war," the fierce struggle of the Red

and White Roses--a contest which, after having for well nigh half a

century filled the country with commotion and drenched it in civil

slaughter, left it in a state of exhaustion, with the flower of its

nobility destroyed.

Piers Legh had not completed more than ten years of his married life

when the unrelenting Bolingbroke caused his head to be placed on the

highest pinnacle of the east gate of Chester. His widow, Margaret

D'Anyers, survived him nearly thirty years, her death occurring June

24, 1428. The issue of the marriage was, in addition to a daughter,

Margaret, who became the wife of Sir John de Ashton, two sons--Peter,

who succeeded as heir, and John, who married Alice, daughter and

heiress of John Alcock, of Ridge, an estate in the township of Sutton,

near Macclesfield, and from them sprang the Leghs of Ridge, Rushall,

Stoneleigh, and Stockwell; the last representative of the parent line,

Edward Legh, up to the time of his death, which occurred only a few

years ago, residing at the Limes, Lewisham, near London.

Peter, the eldest son of Piers Legh, could only have been a youth of

some eight summers when his father met his untimely end. If--

Left by his sire, too young such loss to know,

it was well for him that he had a prudent counsellor in the person of

his widowed mother. In 1403 she gave him her moiety of Gropenhall,

which had been acquired by one of the D'Anyers in marriage with the

heiress of Boydell, of Gropenhall and had come to her through failure

of male issue in her father's family; and he, thereupon, quartered

the arms of Boydell with his paternal coat, an augmentation that has

ever since been retained. About the same time he added largely to his

possessions by his marriage with Joanna, the daughter and heiress

of Sir Gilbert de Haydock, of Haydock, near Newton-le-Willows, a

wealthy Lancashire Knight; by this alliance he ultimately acquired the

extensive estates of the Haydocks, viz.: Haydock, Bradley, Burtonwood,

Warrington, Overford, Sonkey, Bold, Newton, Lowton, Golborne, and

Walton-le-Dale, an acquisition that explains the close connection of

the Leghs of Lyme with Lancashire. His mother was yet in possession

of Lyme, and he therefore fixed his abode at Bradley, in Burtonwood,

which became the principal residence of the family and so continued

until about the year 1569, when the erection of the present mansion of

Lyme was begun. Leyland, the antiquary, writing in the time of Henry

VIII., says:--"Syr Perse de Lee hath his place at Bradley in a park

two miles from Newton." The old house has long since disappeared, but

the picturesque ruins of the arched and buttressed gate tower, which

formed the principal approach, with a portion of the bastille above

for the detention of offenders and doubtful visitors, still remain, a

memorial of its ancient stateliness. The manor continued in possession

of the family until after the death of Thomas Peter Legh, of Lyme, when

it passed by settlement to his son, the Rev. Peter Legh, incumbent of

St. Peter's, Newton, who sold it to the late Samuel Brooks, Esq., of

Manchester.

Though Peter Legh was old enough to take to himself a wife it was

fortunate for him that he was as yet too young to take part in the

stirring scenes that marked the opening years of the usurper's reign,

when

The blood of Richard, shed on Pomfret stones,

called for retribution, and the realm was filled with turbulence and

disquiet, else he might have shared the fate which befel so many other

Cheshire men, who, unable to forget the misfortunes of their former

master, met at Sandiway, in Delamere Forest, and joined the valiant

Hotspur, renowned in song and story,

Who was sweet Fortune's minion and her pride,

and Glendower, the Welsh chieftain, in their insurrection, when at the

market cross of Shrewsbury, after the bloody strife on Hately field,

where Falstaff "fought a long hour by Shrewsbury clock," and his

ragamuffins got well peppered, the Baron of Kinderton and Sir Richard

Vernon, the Baron of Shipbrooke, with the Earl of Worcester, paid the

penalty of their revolt with the same horrible barbarities that a

hundred years before had been inflicted upon David, Prince of Wales,

the brother of Llewellynn.

Henry, Prince of Wales, the whilom roysterer and tavern

brawler--Hotspur's "nimble-footed, madcap Harry"--was also Earl of

Chester, and passed much of his time within his palatinate. Anxious, as

it would seem, to make some amends for the wrongs his

Father made in compassing the crown,

he took the youthful Peter Legh into his favour. By a deed, dated 26

July, 12 Henry IV. (1411), he granted him certain lands in Macclesfield

Forest, near to his domain of Lyme, called Heghlegh, together with the

office of forester, which had been held by the Hegleghs and Savages

successively, designing his gift apparently as a peace-offering and a

token of his royal favour, and with a view probably to services that

might be rendered him in the future.

On the 20th of March, 1413, the troubled reign of Henry the Fourth drew

to a close. The throne of the usurper had proved but a bed of thorns,

for no sovereign ever was more harassed by plots and insurrections. The

violent animosities and contentions that prevailed during his reign

reduced his frame to premature decay, and at the early age of forty-six

he breathed his last in the abbot's lodgings at Westminster.

His son and successor, Henry the Fifth, was not slow in observing

the dying injunctions of his royal father not to allow the kingdom

to remain long at peace lest it should breed intestine commotion.

Wise in his generation, he believed that a foreign war might divert

the attention of his subjects from a too close examination of the

justness of his own pretensions to the crown, and the excuse for such

an enterprise was not far to seek. France was at the time in a state

of deplorable disorder; and as the victories of Crescy and Poictiers

were yet fresh in the memories of the English people and the favourite

theme of song and story, France seemed to furnish the opportunity which

the new King so greatly desired. Anxious to quarter its lilies with

the lions of England, Henry, shortly after his coronation, resolved

upon asserting the claim to the crown of that kingdom which his great

grandfather, Edward the Third, had urged with so much confidence and

success--a crown to which, it must be admitted, he had about as much

right as Rob Roy had to the cattle he "lifted," or to the spoils of the

raids and forays he engaged in. Parliament made him a liberal grant in

aid of the expedition; free gifts were received from the clergy; he

borrowed from all who could be prevailed upon to lend, and to procure

money pawned his plate, jewels, and even his crown. With much diligence

he collected men, arms, provisions, ships, and, in short, everything

necessary to enforce his demands and aggrandise himself at the expense

of his distracted neighbours.

The armies of the Kings of England in those days were made up of

contingents, brought into the field by adventurous spirits, who entered

into indenture with the Sovereign to serve in person with a certain

number of followers for a fixed period, and on such terms as were

agreed upon--men of strong limbs and daring spirit, who were influenced

less by the abstract justice of the cause for which they were to fight

than the consciousness that they would receive their due share of the

_gaines de guerre_. Copies of many such indentures or contracts between

the King and the persons who undertook to provide a stated number of

men at arms and archers, as well as with those who agreed to procure

carpenters, masons, waggons, bows, arrows, &c., are printed in Rymer's

_Foedera_, and these documents furnish much interesting information

on the military arrangements of the age. Among the persons who entered

into such a covenant was Peter Legh, of Bradley and Lyme, and in the

muster roll printed in Sir N. Harris Nicolas's "Battle of Agincourt" we

find him thus entered:--

Monsr. Piers de Legh, ov sa retenu,

Robert Orell

Hugh de Orell

Thomas Sutton

John Pygott

George de Asheley.

Those who formed his retinue, were probably archers; the two first

named men, apparently Lancashire men, hailing from Orell, near Wigan,

and the others, judging by their patronymic, were Cheshire men. Indeed,

from the liberal contingents sent up, the two counties seem to have

furnished a very large proportion of the eight thousand fighting men

who mustered at Southampton. As the rhyming chronicler has it--

They recruited Cheshire and Lancashire,

And Derby hills that were so free;

Tho' no married man, nor no widow's son,

They recruited three thousand men and three.

Great was the bustle and preparation, and exciting were the scenes then

witnessed. Michael Drayton, writing three centuries ago, thus describes

the separation between those comprising the invading force and their

relatives and friends:--

There might a man have seen in ev'ry street,

The father bidding farewell to his son;

Small children kneeling at their father's feet;

The wife with her dear husband ne'er had done:

Brother, his brother, with adieu to greet;

One friend to take leave of another run;

The maiden with her best belov'd to part,

Gave him her hand, who took away her heart.

The nobler youth, the common rank above,

On their curvetting coursers mounted fair;

One wore his mistress' garter, one her glove;

And he a lock of his dear lady's hair;

And he her colours, whom he most did love;

There was not one but did some favour wear:

And each one took it, on his happy speed,

To make it famous for some knightly deed.

Many of those engaged in the expedition entered into arrangements

for their wives and families that they might have some safe retreat

during their absence; in the case of Peter Legh's wife, however, the

probabilities are that she would take up her abode with her widowed

mother-in-law, Dame Margaret Legh. On the 7th of August (1415) the

Royal standard was unfurled, the trumpets flared, and with all the

pomp and circumstance of war, the King and his suite embarked on board

the Trinity Royal. The ships cast off their moorings, and Peter Legh,

with Fluellen and Williams, and Nym--who was hanged for stealing a

"pyx"--a very motley force indeed, drifted slowly down Southampton

Water upon their venturous quest. Fifteen hundred vessels were

comprised in the fleet, and fifteen hundred sails were set; but more

than a week elapsed before the voyage, which can now be made in a few

hours, was accomplished, and the vessels had cast anchor in the Seine

off Kidecaws (_i.e._, Chef de Caux), about three miles from Harfleur,

a place not unknown in Cheshire annals, for it was a knight of that

country who bestowed honours upon the Du Guesclin, when he succeeded in

capturing the great Cheshire hero, Sir Hugh Calveley.

After a siege of thirty-six days, Harfleur surrendered to the English

King, whose triumph the poet sings:--

He sette a sege, the sothe for to say,

To Harflue toune with ryal array;

That toune he wan, and made a fray,

That Fraunce will rywe 'tyl domesday.

Deo gratias Anglia

Redde pro victoria.

The victory, however, was dearly bought, for while the siege was

proceeding, dysentery broke out in the English camp from the

overflowing marshes, and raged with such severity that about five

thousand fell victims, among them being Peter Legh's kinsman, Sir

Robert de Legh, of Adlington, who died five days after the city

surrendered. On the 22nd September, the governor of Harfleur, having

failed to obtain succours, opened the gates, exclaiming--

Our expedition hath this day an end.

The Dauphin, whom of succours we entreated,

Returns us that his powers are not yet ready

To raise so great a siege. Therefore, great King,

We yield our lives and town to thy soft mercy.

Enter our gates, dispose of us and ours,

For we are no longer defensible.

The Earl of Dorset was put in possession of the town and garrison, and,

after a short rest, Henry moved forward with the remnant of his army

towards Calais, intending to ford the Somme at Blanchetaque, where

Edward III. had crossed before the battle of Crescy, but on arriving at

Maisoncelle, on the evening of the 24th of October, he found an army

of fifty thousand men prepared to dispute his further progress, their

position being between the woods of Agincourt and Tramecourt. When

the day dawned on the morrow, St. Crispin's Day, the two armies were

face to face, but for some hours neither made any movement, when at

last old Sir Thomas Erpingham, an English knight, grown grey with age

and honour, flung his truncheon into the air, and called "Nestrocque"

(now strike), and dismounted, and every man advanced shouting the

national "Hurrah." The first discharge of the cloth-yard shafts by

the Lancashire and Cheshire bowmen threw the enemy's men-at-arms into

confusion, their horses became unmanageable, and the fight raged with

uncommon fury; the English archers when they had discharged all their

arrows, threw away their bows and fought with their swords and bills;

the contest becoming more a slaughter than a battle. In three hours the

struggle was ended, and more than ten thousand Frenchmen had been made

to bite the dust.

Our great dramatist represents Henry as exclaiming just before he

entered upon the fight:--

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers:

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition!

Peter Legh was one of the "band of brothers;" he was in the thick of

the fight, shed his blood, and for services was knighted and made a

banneret upon the field. As an old ballad expresses it:

Than for sothe that knyght comely,

In Agincourt feld he faught manly;

Thorow grace of God most mighty,

He had bothe the felde, and the victory.

Deo gratias Anglia

Redde pro victoria!

It is very commonly asserted that he died in Paris of the wounds he had

received at Agincourt, but the statement can hardly be correct, for

six years after the battle was fought his name occurs as party to a

marriage settlement, and his death did not take place until 1422.

The wound he received at Agincourt did not incapacitate him from taking

part a few years later in a foray that arose out of some quarrel

between Sir Peter Dutton of Dutton, in Cheshire, and Sir William

Atherton of Atherton, in Lancashire, knight, the two having made

inroads on each other's possessions. The circumstance is related by Sir

Peter Leycester, who says that--

Great contention fell between Sir Peter Dutton and Sir William

Athurton, of Athurton, in Lancashire, insomuch that they made inroads

and invasions one upon the other; and the said Sir Piers Dutton

and his adherents, to wit, Sir Rafe Bostock of Bostock, Richard

Warburton of Budworth, Thomas Warburton of Halton, John Done of

Utkinton, junior, John Manley of Manley, Hugh Dutton of Halton,

the elder, William Leycester, of Nether-Tabley, Sir Peter Legh of

Clifton,[55] and John Carington of Carington, were all sued by Sir

William Athurton, for taking away forty of his oxen and forty cows,

out of his closes at Athurton, and for beating of his servants. But

the variance was composed between them by the award of John Duke of

Bedford, Earl of Richmond and Kendal, constable of England, and regent

of the kingdom in the absence of Henry the Fifth, dated 9 Aprilis 7

Hen. V. 1419, restitution being awarded on both sides: the horses and

saddles taken by Sir William to be restored to Sir Piers Dutton, and

the cattel taken by Sir Piers to be restored to the said Sir William.

Our ancestors, it is to be feared, were of a quarrelsome disposition,

and, much as we may boast of "the good old times," it must be confessed

that they lose much of their charm when from our modern standpoint we

begin to examine closely the lives and habits of those who figured

in them. There is no reason to suppose that Sir Peter Legh was more

disorderly than his neighbours, similar outrages to those committed on

Sir William Atherton's lands being then of common occurrence.

Sir Peter Legh was not the man to find happiness in repose. When, in

the summer of 1417, the King embarked on his second expedition to

France, he again unsheathed his sword and served under the standard

of his Sovereign. He had returned to England in 1421, though his stay

could only have been very short, for in the following year he was again

with the army of the King, and took part in the protracted siege of

Meaux, when Henry lost so many of his soldiers by epidemic sickness.

The fortress held out for seven months, the garrison only yielding

when starved out. In the attack, Sir Peter would seem to have received

a wound which eventually proved fatal, his death occurring in Paris

on the 22nd June, 1422, a few days after the festivities with which

the public entry into that city was celebrated. His body was brought

over to England, and buried in the church of Macclesfield, in the

rebuilding of which he had in his lifetime been a liberal contributor,

as evidenced by the prominent position assigned to his armorial shield

on the west front of the tower. Thus the second of the house of Lyme

died from the wounds he had received while fighting under the banner

of the son and successor of the Lancastrian usurper who had condemned

his father to the block for his loyalty to his lawful sovereign and the

house of York.

Sir Peter Legh could have been little more than thirty years of age

when he died of the honourable wounds he had received while serving

under the standard of his king. Among those who had fought by his side

at Agincourt was Sir Richard Molineux, of Sefton, a Lancashire knight

of considerable wealth and influence.

Sir Richard was himself a widower at the time, and naturally felt

compassion for his comrade's widow in her bereavement. His compassion,

however, ripened into a warmer feeling; the feeling was mutual, and

when the days of mourning were accomplished Sir Peter Legh's youthful

relict bestowed her hand upon him, and thus became ancestress of the

Earls of Sefton as well as of the Leghs of Lyme. She survived her

second husband several years, her death occurring at Croxteth on the

31st of January, 1439. She was buried at Sefton Church, where a stately

stone altar-tomb was erected over her remains, which may still be seen

with a long Latin inscription upon it, now in part obliterated, but

interesting as showing the extent of the possessions which she, as

heiress of the house of Haydock, added to the patrimonial lands of the

Leghs.

Hic jacet domina Johanna, quonda uxor

Petri Legh militis, et postea uxor Richardi

Molineux militis, quæ fuit dña de

Bradley, Haydoke, et similiter tertiæ

Partis villar. de Werington, Mikille

Sonke, et Burtonwode ac eciam dña

Diversarû parcellarû terrarû et

Tenement, infra villas de Newton,

Golborn, Lauton, Bold et Walton

Le dale. Quæ obiit in festo S.

Sulpitii Epi. A. Dni mccccxxxix

Cujus animæ ppitietur Deus. Amen.

Sir Peter Legh's only son, who bore his own baptismal appellation,

was born at Clifton, near Halton Castle, a seat of the Savages, on

the 4th of June, 1415, the eve of the father's departure to engage

in the contest at Agincourt, and had therefore just completed his

seventh year. When his mother remarried he was removed from Clifton

and brought up in the household at Croxteth, where, in addition to his

mother's guardianship, he had the advantage of the friendly interest

and supervision of the head of the great Lancashire house of Molineux.

In 1426 his grandmother, Margaret, D'Anyers, settled a portion of

her Cheshire estates upon him, and the remainder, including Lyme, he

succeeded to on her death, June 24, 1428. He had then, at the early age

of thirteen, become the owner of large territorial estates, and for

the better protection of the fair patrimony that had come to him his

stepfather in the same year obtained the custody of all his lands in

Cheshire until he should be of age, as well as the right of contracting

him in marriage, a right he exercised by covenanting to marry him to

his own daughter, Margaret, whom he had had by his first wife, Ellen,

daughter of Sir William Haryngton, of Hornby. The year 1432 saw the

contract carried into effect and the betrothed couple united. Doubtless

it was a season of bustle and business, and we may suppose the stately

halls of Croxteth to have been crowded with a gay company assembled to

witness and do honour to the espousals of the young people.

Four years later he made proof of age, the inquiry being held at

Macclesfield, and he was then put in possession of the splendid

inheritance which, by their successful marriages, his progenitors

had accreted. During his minority his patrimony had been greatly

improved under the careful management of his stepfather, and in the

critical times in which his earlier life was passed he appears to

have acted with much prudence and caution, taking more interest in

the development of his estate than in the fierce contests that were

then being waged. It was a time when craft and subtlety had gradually

superseded the old spirit of chivalry--when strength of arm was of

little avail without astuteness of head in shifting from side to side

in the changing fortunes of contending parties; and, living in this

age of political chaos, the youthful lord of Lyme skilfully contrived

to keep neutral between the factions into which the dominant party was

split. Though holding no higher rank than that of esquire, his large

territorial possessions gave him considerable influence in the two

palatine counties; in the Cheshire records his name is of frequent

occurrence, and, like many of his ancestors, he had various offices

of trust in connection with the hundred and forest of Macclesfield.

Though his father had received many marks of favour from, and had died

in the service of, the Lancastrian King, he inherited a predilection

for the house of York, from the representative of which, Richard II.,

his grandfather had received many substantial benefits, including the

grant of the manor of Lyme. He was too shrewd and cautious, however,

to allow his preferences to betray him into any act of open hostility

to the reigning sovereign, though his intimate relations with a

powerful Lancashire Baron, Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, who had

married the sister of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and who, in

opposition to the wishes of Henry VI. and his intrepid wife, Margaret

of Anjou, had been made regent during the King's sickness, brought

him under suspicion and resulted in a letter being addressed by the

King to the Sheriff of Lancashire in 1454, commanding him to deliver

letters of Privy Seal to "Thomas Pilkington and Piers Legh, squires,"

a significant warning which had the desired effect in restraining

Peter Legh, for a time at all events, from engaging in any perilous

enterprise or openly espousing the cause of either party.

A few years before this he had the misfortune to lose his wife, her

death occurring at Bradley, May 13, 1450. She was buried at Winwick, in

the chantry chapel which Sir Gilbert Haydock, her husband's maternal

ancestor, had founded. In October of the following year Peter Legh

again entered the marriage state, his second wife being Elizabeth, the

widow of Sir John Pilkington, of Pilkington, and one of the daughters

of Edmund Trafford, of Trafford, by his wife, Alice, eldest daughter

and co-heir of Sir William Venables, of Bolyn.

The great struggle between the Red and White Roses was now in its

birth-throes. The Duke of York had been expelled from the regency;

thirsting for revenge, he levied an army in the north and marched to

St. Albans, where he found the King's forces encamped in the town,

which was assaulted with great fury. The battle lasted but one short

hour, but it was disastrous to the cause of Henry; five thousand of his

troops were left dead upon the field, among the slain being the Dukes

of Somerset and Buckingham, the Earls of Northumberland and Stafford,

and Lord Clifford, while the King himself, who during the fight had

been wounded in the neck by an arrow, was made prisoner.

The blood shed at St Albans on that fatal 22nd of May, 1455, was the

first that flowed in the bitter contest which came to an end only when

thirty years had come and gone, when thirteen pitched battles had been

fought, and the victory on Bosworth Field had been achieved--a strife

so deadly that, as Michael Drayton tells us, the ties of blood and

kindred were forgotten, and the nearest relations fought on opposite

sides--

Then Dutton Dutton kills, a Done doth kill a Done;

A Booth a Booth, and Leigh by Leigh is overthrown;

A Venables against a Venables doth stand;

A Troutbeck fighteth with a Troutbeck hand to hand;

There Molineux doth make a Molineux to die;

And Egerton the strength of Egerton doth try.

Peter Legh doubtless rejoiced in the Yorkist victory at St. Albans,

but the warning which Henry VI. addressed to him the year before had

deterred him from bearing any part in it, and he appears to have acted

with equal prudence four years later, when the reconciliation between

the Duke of York and Queen Margaret--the "dissimulated unity and

concord," as the city chronicler called it--came to an end and civil

war broke out afresh. In that year (1459) the Yorkist forces were once

more marshalled against those of the King. The Earl of Salisbury raised

the standard of the White Rose, and with an army of 5,000 men marched

through Cheshire into Staffordshire, almost within sight of Lyme, and

then by way of Congleton and Newcastle-under-Lyme to Drayton. Before

he could join the Duke he was overtaken by Lord Audley at the head of

a superior force of Lancastrians, and on the 23rd September the battle

of Blore-heath, where the head of the house of Stanley amused both

sides with promises of support without venturing to strike a blow for

either, was fought. The struggle was long and sanguinary, but victory

again declared in favour of the Yorkists, Henry's adherents leaving

2,400 dead upon the field, many of whom were from Lancashire and

Cheshire, among them being the brother of Peter Legh's first wife, Sir

Richard Molineux, who fell fighting in the cause to which Peter Legh

was in his heart opposed. At Northampton in July of the following year

the fortunes of the Yorkists were again in the ascendant, and we read

that Queen Margaret and her son, who had sought safety in flight, had

a narrow escape of being captured near Chester by a retainer of the

Stanleys.

The struggle of the Roses was now at fever heat, and in the short

space of a single year no less than three great and bloody battles

were fought. Peter Legh's prudence and circumspection failed him;

his sympathy with the House of York could no longer be restrained,

and, drawing the sword, he openly cast in his lot with the insurgent

Yorkists who were then gathering at Sandal Castle in Yorkshire.

Margaret of Anjou, repudiating the compromise by which on the death

of Henry VI. the Duke of York was to succeed to the crown to the

exclusion of her son, collected a numerous army out of Lancashire and

Cheshire, and posted herself near Wakefield, whither the Duke of York

advanced to meet her, but with a much inferior force. Conceiving that

his courage would be compromised if he refused to meet a woman in

battle, he, without waiting for his expected reinforcements, risked

a contest, hoping by skill and daring to make up for deficiency in

numbers. In that bloody fray Peter Legh "fleshed his maiden sword;" he

was conspicuous for his valour, and for his daring deeds his princely

leader made him a banneret upon the field. But the tide of success

had turned; the Yorkists were entirely routed, and the triumph of the

Lancastrians was complete. After performing prodigies of valour the

Duke of York himself was slain. The Queen, proud of such a trophy,

ordered the Duke's head to be struck off and placed upon the gates of

York, adorned with a paper crown to indicate the frailty of his claims--

Off with his head, and set it on York gates;

So York may overlook the town of York.

An unfeminine speech that did not cause her much feeling of remorse,

for afterwards, when gazing upon the terrible spectacle as she entered

the city, she exclaimed to Henry--

Welcome, my Lord, to this brave town of York;

Yonder's the head of that arch enemy;

Does not the object cheer your heart, my lord?

And Lord Clifford--the "Black-faced Clifford," as he has been

called--more sanguinary than his Royal mistress, when the battle was

over plunged his sword into the breast of the Duke's youngest son, the

Earl of Rutland, in revenge, as he alleged, for the death of his father

at St. Albans.

If the battle of Wakefield was fatal to the house of York, it proved

no less fatal to the victors, for the cruelties perpetrated by the

Black Clifford were repaid a few months after with tenfold vengeance

at Towton, a contest in which, there is reason to believe, Peter Legh

also bore a part. On the 4th of March (1461), the young Duke of York

assumed the crown and sceptre, but the ceremonies attendant upon his

accession to the throne were few and brief. Queen Margaret was in the

field with a powerful army, and on the 12th of March Edward marched

out of London northward to give her battle. On the eve of Palm Sunday

(March 29th) the opposing forces met on Towton Heath; at four o'clock

the battle began; the hours of darkness brought no rest, and through

the long night and until the afternoon of the next day, amidst a fall

of snow, it raged with unrelenting fury. It was the bloodiest battle

in all the wars of the Roses, and when the sun went down thirty-three

thousand Englishmen lay dead upon the field. Some of them were buried

in the neighbouring church at Saxton, but by far the greater number

sleep where they fell, and the red and white roses which bloom on the

field of their last strife form their touching and appropriate memorial.

The carnage of this terrible field is appalling. If we are to believe

the statements of contemporary writers, for weeks afterwards the blood

stood in puddles and stagnated in the gutters.[56] Among the slain

was the "Black-faced" Clifford, who slew Rutland at Wakefield, and of

those whom the sword spared upon the field not a few fell beneath the

headsman's axe. Well might Warwick, dealing out a poetic justice, then

say to the victorious Edward--

From off the gates of York fetch down the head--

Your father's head which Clifford placed there;

Instead whereof let this supply the room,

Measure for measure must be answered.

The fate of the Cliffords has been consecrated by the poet. The widow

of the "black-faced" lord and her infant boy fled "to the caves and to

the brooks;" the child led a solitary life--

On Carrock's side a shepherd boy--

wandering at will through "Mosedale's groves" and in "Blencathra's

rugged caves" until the--

Weary time

That brought him up to manhood's prime.

When the victory at Bosworth again placed the Lancastrians upon the

throne his estates and honours were restored. Though unable to read

or write when called to Parliament, he had, during his shepherd life,

learnt purer and wiser lessons than those through which his progenitors

had brought destruction on themselves.

The triumph at Towton Field broke the hopes of the Lancastrian party,

and left Edward unquestionably King. The services which Peter Legh had

rendered at Wakefield and elsewhere did not long remain unrewarded;

within six weeks of the fight he was appointed governor and constable

of the Castle of Rhuddlan in Flintshire, for life, with a salary

of £40 a year, and two years later he was made escheater of Flint

during the King's pleasure. It was not long before his services were

again called in requisition. In 1462 the unconquerable activity of

the resolute Queen Margaret had once more inspired the hopes of the

Lancastrian party. Having raised an army of adventurers in France,

she landed on the northern coasts in October; Edward was quickly at

the head of a great force to meet her, and among those who went out

with him, on the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, as we learn from

old Stowe the chronicler, was Peter Legh, of Lyme, who appears on the

list as "Sir Peirce A'Leigh," and is included among the knights who

engaged in the enterprise, from which it is evident that that honour

had been conferred upon him either at Towton or immediately after.[57]

There was little occasion for his services. On the advance of Edward,

Margaret escaped to her ships, which were scattered by a tempest, and

a portion of her forces, being cast on Holy Island, were pursued and

destroyed.

For a time the country was comparatively tranquil, and Sir Peter Legh,

if he did not turn his sword into a pruning hook, was content to lay it

aside and repair to his home at Bradley, where he employed his leisure

in adorning his mansion and improving his estate. While so engaged

he drew up a minute account of the territorial possessions of the

family in Lancashire and Cheshire, which is still preserved among the

muniments at Lyme. It is closely written in Latin on vellum, and forms

a thick volume of 333 folios. That portion which relates to Warrington

has been transcribed and translated for the members of the Chetham

Society[58] by Mr. William Beamont, and to the same authority we are

indebted for the following description of Lyme, which shows that it had

been emparked and that a mansion had been erected there as early as

1466:--

Rental of Lyme, its manor and park, with Over Hanley and Nether Hanley

in the Forest of Macclesfield, in the parish of Prestbury and county

of Chester, belonging to Sir Peter Legh, Knight, at the feasts of the

Nativity of St. John the Baptist and St. Martin in winter, written

and described on the 29 March in the year of our Lord 1466 and in the

sixth of King Edward IV. after the Conquest.

In the first place the said Peter holds the aforesaid manor of Lyme,

in the county of Chester, to him, his heirs and assigns for ever; that

is to say, one fair hall with a high chamber, a kitchen, a bakehouse,

and a brewhouse, with a granary, stable, and a bailiff's house, and a

fair Park, surrounded by palings, and divers fields and hays (hedged

enclosures) contained in the same park, with the woods, underwoods,

meadows, feedings, and pastures thereunto belonging, which are worth

to the said Peter xli (£10) a year.

The other lands belonging to the estate are then described, the total

rental being set down at £42 9s., but no mention is made of any deer or

of the famous wild cattle.

Occupied in more peaceful pursuits, we do not meet with the name of

Sir Peter at Hedgeley Moor, at Hexham, or in any other of the contests

that occurred in the subsequent years of Edward's reign. In 1468 a

sorrow fell upon his home caused by the death of his only son, Peter

Legh, which occurred at Macclesfield on the 2nd of August, and on the

4th April, 1474, his second wife was taken from him. Both were buried

by the side of his ancestors at Winwick. Four years later he set about

the fulfilment of a project he had long had in contemplation, the

endowment of the chantry chapel of the Holy Trinity in Winwick Church,

which his mother's kinsman, Sir Gilbert de Haydock, had founded. His

charter bears date 16th November, and he must then have felt his end

approaching, for he died at Bradley on the 27th of the same month at

the age of 63; and a few days later, amid the sorrowing regrets of his

dependents and neighbours, he was borne to his last resting place in

the family chapel to which he had so recently been a liberal benefactor.

Sir Peter Legh's only son, who had predeceased him, and who bore the

same baptismal name, married at a very early age a rich Lancashire

heiress--Mabel, the elder of the two daughters and co-heirs of James

Croft, of Dalton-in-Lonsdale--Sir James Croft, as Flower, the Herald,

erroneously styles him--acquiring in right of his wife, as a note to an

ancient Latin pedigree of the Leghs expresses it, "the inheritance of

the manor of Dalton and ye presentation of ye parsonage of Claughton

_alternis vicibus_," thus greatly enlarging the already extensive

possessions of his house. Alison, the sister of Mabel Croft, conveyed

her portion in marriage to Geoffrey Middleton, of Middleton in

Kirby-Lonsdale. These two ladies were double heiresses, their mother

being a heiress of the Butlers, who owned lands in Freckleton, within

the parish of Kirkham. The alternate advowson which the Leghs thus

acquired remained in their possession until 1807, when it was sold to

the Fenwicks, and once more became united with the lordship of the

manor.

While Sir Peter Legh was busied in repairing and enlarging the

ancestral home at Bradley, his son Peter and his young wife took up

their abode at Lowton, an estate inherited from the Haydocks. The

times were full of trouble, for though Edward IV. was seated upon the

throne, and, as Stowe, the ancient chronicler, solemnly assures us, an

angel had come down from heaven and "censed him" when the crown was put

upon his head in St Paul's, and the Pontiff had written him a letter

of congratulation, the angry billows of civil war were heaving and

breaking in different parts of the country and kept the government in

continuous alarm. The King's secret marriage with Elizabeth Woodville,

the widow of a Lancastrian, led to an estrangement with Warwick

which threatened a renewal of internecine strife. The wise caution

and far-sighted sagacity which had so often kept Sir Peter Legh from

embarking in rash and dangerous enterprises was not exemplified in his

son, who, forgetting the traditions of his house, would seem to have

fallen under suspicion of favouring the Lancastrians and sympathising

with the efforts made by the King-making Warwick to restore the same

Henry VI. whom his father had helped to dethrone. Mr. Beamont inclines

to the belief that for some imprudent act he had been bound over to

keep the peace, and unable to find sureties had been committed to the

gaol at Chester. We learn from the Cheshire Records that under date

September 8th, 6th Edward IV. (1466), Peter Legh, of Lowton, Esquire,

was lodged in the city prison in the custody of Agnes Darby--a fact we

commend to the notice of the advocates of women's rights, for women

must surely have been exercising their rights when one of them could

hold such an important trust. The nature of Peter Legh's offence is

not stated, but in an age when knights and gentlemen not unfrequently

had recourse to acts of violence in preference to the slow processes

of the law, in defence of their fancied rights, it is just possible

that it was some such rough-and-ready dispensation of justice and

not a political offence that subjected Peter Legh to the ward of

Agnes Darby. In any case he must have quickly recovered his liberty

and the King's favour as well, for in the following year he was free

and had demised to him for a term of six years (18th October, 1467)

the King's town of Vaynoll, with the pleas and issues of his court

of the town of Rhuddlan, with the tolls of the markets and fairs

(excepting the pleas of the Crown), and also the town of Bagilt--then

written Baghegre--together with a corn-mill there with its toll and

mulcture. His death occurred in the following year at the early age

of thirty-five. His widow survived him a few years only, and died at

Dalton, in 1474, where she would appear to have been living after his

death. Her will, which has been printed by the Chetham Society, bears

date 8th July in that year, and in it she names four of her sons, but

omits all mention of the fifth, Robert, who is known to have been

living in 1527.

It will thus be seen that Sir Peter Legh outlived both his son and

his son's widow. After his death in 1478 an Inquisition was taken

in accordance with custom, when it was found that Piers Legh, his

grandson, then twenty-three years of age, was his next heir. This Piers

or Peter, who was the fifth in direct succession bearing the same name,

had succeeded to his mother's estates on her death in 1474. Seven years

previously, and when he could only have been about twelve years of

age, he had, with the consent of his father, been united in marriage,

with Ellen, the daughter of Sir John Savage, of Clifton, an alliance

that brought him in close connection with the Stanleys, his wife's

mother being Katherine, daughter of Thomas Lord Stanley, of Lathom,

and sister of the first Earl of Derby. They were in close kinship, and

hence it was necessary, to make the marriage valid, to obtain a Papal

dispensation, which was accordingly done.

In mediæval times mercenary considerations entered rather largely into

matrimonial arrangements, and marriages were frequently contracted at

a very early age, the parties most directly concerned being rarely

consulted as to the choice of their respective partners, a practice

that the then state of the law almost necessitated. Indeed, a prudent

father generally deemed it a parental duty to seek out a suitable

match for his heir and marry him in his lifetime, lest, in the event

of his dying and leaving him unmarried, he might fall into the hands

of some greedy courtier, who under pretence of taking care of his

lands, but in reality to enrich himself, might obtain his wardship and

dispose of him in marriage to the highest bidder without any regard to

inclination or mutual liking. This state of things will sufficiently

account for Piers Legh, the heir apparent to so large an estate, being

married at such an early age.

The name of this Piers is unpleasantly associated with a tragic act

alleged to have been committed at Bewsey Hall, near Warrington,

the recollection of which tradition, that delights in passion and

revenge, has preserved. Much mystery hangs about this terrible deed,

and the versions that have come down to us through succeeding ages

are manifestly untrue in many particulars, though the main facts are

doubtless correct. In the Dodsworth MSS., in the Bodleian Library, the

story is told as follows:--

Sir John Boteler, Knight, was slain in his bed by the Lord Stanley's

procurement, Sir Piers Legh and Mister Willm Savage joininge with him

in that action, corruptinge his servants, his porter settinge a light

in a windowe to give knowledge upon the water (_i.e._ the moat) that

was about his house at Bewsaye when the watch that watched about his

house at Bewsaye where your way to ... (Bold?) comes, were gone awaye

to their own homes and then they came over the moate in lether boates

and soe to his chambre where one of his servants called Houlcrofte was

slaine, being his chamberlaine, the other brother betrayed his mr.

They promised him a great reward and he going with them a way they

hanged him at a tree in Bewsaye Park. After this Sir John Boteler's

lady pursued those that slewe her husband, and indyted xx men for that

sarte (_i.e._, assault), but being marryed to Lord Gray, he made her

suites voyd, for which cause she parted from her husband, the Lord

Graye, and came into Lancastershyre and sayd if my Lord wyll not helpe

me that I may have my wyll of mine enemies, yet my bodye shall be

berryed by him, and she caused a tombe of alabaster to be made where

she lyeth upon the right hand of her husband, Sir John Boteler.

Another paper in the Dodsworth collection represents the murder as

being perpetrated in the reign of Henry VII., and assigns as the cause

of the quarrel the refusal of the Botelers to wear the livery of the

Stanleys on the occasion of King Henry's visit to his brother-in-law,

the Earl of Derby, in the summer of 1496. The Earl is stated to have

sent a messenger to Bewsey desiring its lord to wear "his cloath at

that tyme," but, in the absence of Sir John, his lady, with becoming

regard for her lord's dignity, said, "She scorned that her husband

should wayte on her brother, being as well able to entertayne the King

as he was." A note in the Shakerley Papers states that "sir Peter

(Legh) slewe sir Thomas Butteler of Bewseye knight, and for the same

was forced to build Disley church for his penalty at his own cost and

charges 1527." The late Mr. Roby, in his "Traditions of Lancashire,"

has made the tragedy the theme of one of his legendary lyrics, and

describes the struggle with much circumstantial detail; and since then

a resident of Warrington, Mr. John Fitchett, in a poem of considerable

merit, "Bewsey," has told the story, incorporating in it an incident

traditionary in the neighbourhood, though not referred to in the

Dodsworth papers--that when the assassins broke into the hall they were

resisted by a faithful negro, who was killed in the melée:--

Tradition tells, a faithful negro brav'd

Singly their savage rage, and bold oppos'd

Their passage to the room where thoughtless slept

His dearly honour'd master, till at last,

O'erpower'd by numbers, and o'erwhelm'd with wounds,

Alas! he nobly fell. Their reeking hands

Unsated yet, had still to execute

Deeds of black import, and dire schemes of blood:

For ah! unarm'd, and in his bed surpris'd,

Vilely they butchered the devoted Lord!

Meanwhile a servant maid, with pious guile,

Bore in her apron, artfully conceal'd,

The infant heir; and many a danger brav'd,

Saved him uninjured from the ruffian's sword,

The Negro's valour fav'ring his escape.

The interest in the story has been rather increased than lessened by

the recovery of the ancient ballad of "Sir John Butler," printed by

the Early English Text Society from Bishop Percy's folio MS. (v. iii.

p. 210). In the following ballad the story as related in the Dodsworth

MSS. is adhered to with tolerable accuracy:--

Listen, lords and ladies fair

And gentles, to my roundelay.

List, youths and maidens debonnaire,

To this most doleful tragedy.

Of Pincerna, the noble race,

That Botiller was yclept, I say;

And Bewsey Hall, that goodly place,

Where traitors did the Butler slay.

Fatal the feud 'tween him and one

Whose sister was his wedded wife;

The proud Earl Derby, whose false son

Did plot to take the Butler's life.

Savage by name and nature too,

Piers Legh, that pierced all too free,

Join'd with Lord Stanley and his crew,

And bought the warder's treacherie.

A light shone from the warder's tow'r,

When all the house lay sunk in sleep,

To guide those murd'rers, fell and stour,

Across the moat, dark, wide, and deep.

In leathern boats they cross'd and then

The warder softly oped the gate:

Bold fronted them the chamberlain;

Holcrofte his master warn'd too late.

Him they slew first, and then the Knight,

While sleeping, 'neath their daggers bled:--

A faithful negro, black as night,

Snatcht up the infant heir and fled.

The felon porter craved reward

For treach'rous guiding in the dark:

They paid him; then for his false guard

They hung him on a tree i' th' park.

In vain they sought--the child was saved;

But gallant Butler was no more:

That night his wife in London dreamt

That Bewsey Hall did swim with gore.

When that she learn'd the foul deed done,

She pray'd they might have felon's doom;

But might 'gainst right the struggle won;

Then sigh'd she forth in bitter gloom:--

"If by my lord's fell foes and mine

"My will in life is thus denied;

"And I must live, bereaved, to pine,

"Death nor the grave shall us divide,"

An alabaster tomb she made,

To her lov'd husband's mem'ry true;

And on her death her corse was laid

Close by his side, 'neath aged yew.

Mourn for the brave, the fair, and true,

Sleeping in love, and hope, and faith;

May ruthless ruffians ever rue

Their murder foul, brave Butler's death!

The "alabaster tomb" in the Butler Chantry in Warrington parish church

still exists, and the effigies of Sir John and his wife are recumbent

upon it; and there also is an effigy of the faithful negro reposing

near to that of his murdered master, or at least what common report

proclaims as such, only that, unfortunately for the story, the darkened

figure is that of a former lady of Bewsey, and not the faithful

servitor of the Botelers, and is, moreover, believed to have been

brought from Warrington Friary, since the time when Randle Holme made

his Church Notes in 1640.

The tragic story of Bewsey, which is so involved in obscurity and

contradiction, and overlaid with so much legendary exaggeration, has

been a cause of perplexity for many a long year to local antiquaries.

No one of the alleged actors, no one of the facts, and no one of the

causes of the supposed quarrel can be true. Sir John Butler's death

occurred before the Earldom of Derby had been conferred on Lord

Stanley; when King Henry visited Lathom, the Earl's sister, Sir John

Butler's widow, was sleeping her last sleep, and at the time of Sir

John's death Piers Legh was a mere child of eight years, so that unless

he was very precocious his share in the outrage is purely mythical,

and we may therefore dismiss the story of his being sentenced, as a

penance for his participation in the murder, to build Disley Church.

And yet the story has, doubtless, a foundation in fact, though the

_actores fabulæ_ may be phantoms. Sir John Butler died on the 26th of

February, 1463; the cause of his death is shrouded in mystery, but that

he died by violence is not altogether improbable. In those days, when

feuds were rife and outrages of daily occurrence, the crime of murder

was held of small account, and one that ofttimes might be expiated

by the payment of a sum of money. The Botelers had ranged themselves

on the side of the Lancastrians. Lord Stanley, who was a consistent

supporter of the party of good luck, was then a Yorkist, as was also

his nephew, Piers Legh, and Piers Legh's brother-in-law, William

Savage. Was the Boteler, whichever of the family he might be, whose

life was sacrificed the victim of some political feud arising out of

the contentions of the rival houses of York and Lancaster?

In the summer of 1482 England was in a state of commotion; Edward

had quarrelled with James III. of Scotland and concluded a treaty of

alliance with the Duke of Albany, the brother of the Scottish King,

who was then aspiring to the royal authority, and had agreed to hold

Scotland as a fief of England in return for the support that had

been promised him. The Duke of Gloucester--so soon to become Richard

III.--who was lord of the marches, had the chief command of an invading

force and marched northwards. The wily chief of the house of Lathom,

Thomas Lord Stanley, commanded the right wing, some 4,000 strong, and

Piers Legh, of Lyme and Bradley, who four years before had succeeded

to the full enjoyment of his patrimony, buckled on his armour and

marched under his banner. By July they had reached the old border town

which overlooks the estuary of the silvery Tweed, the scene of so

many stirring events--Berwick, which the "meek usurper," Henry VI.,

had surrendered when he fled to Scotland after his defeat at Towton.

The town quickly yielded, but, as the castle held out, Gloucester,

unwilling to lose time, marched northwards towards Edinburgh, leaving

Lord Stanley and his force to prosecute the siege. On the 24th of

August the garrison capitulated, and from that time to the present

Berwick has remained severed from the sister kingdom. Peter Legh by his

dash and daring gained golden opinions, and gained the right to wear

his golden spurs as well, for he was made a banneret on Hutton Field.

Had Gloucester had sufficient discernment he might during that

expedition have discovered how little reliance was to be placed on the

fidelity of a Stanley. Tradition says that either in going or returning

dissensions and jealous bickerings arose between the two commanders;

the spirit of hostility spread to the ranks of their followers, and

several frays occurred between Richard's and Stanley's men, in one of

which, near Salford Bridge, the latter had the best of it and succeeded

in capturing one of Gloucester's banners, an incident commemorated in

Glover's rhyming chronicle--

Jack of Wigan he did take

The Duke of Gloucester's banner,

And hung it up in Wigan church

A monument of honour.

On the 9th of April in the succeeding year Edward IV. died. Gloucester

was at the time at York, and it is said that he attended the minster

with a retinue of six hundred knights and esquires to observe the

obsequies of his departed brother, and swear fealty to his nephew, the

boy-King--Edward V.--the King whose death he was so soon to compass.

Having performed these duties he hastened southwards with the intention

of intercepting the King before he could reach London, and it is

said that on his way he spent a night under Sir Peter Legh's roof at

Bradley, when, in the hope, as it would seem, of securing the future

services of his host, he granted him an annuity of £10 for life.

On the 6th of July Richard and his Queen, Anne, were crowned at

Westminster, when, "the Lord Stanley bare the mace before the King,

and my Lady of Richmond (his wife) bare the Queen's train," for the

Stanleys were fated to flourish whatever party was in the ascendant.

But "uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," especially when the head

is that of a usurper, as Richard had painful experience. His cruelties

had made him unpopular with the people; the Lancastrian party, which

still numbered many adherents, took heart in the hope of being able to

displace him and seat Henry of Richmond, Lord Stanley's stepson, upon

the throne, and ere long the standard of revolt was raised. In January,

1485, commissions were addressed "to all knights, esquires, gentlemen,

and all other of the King's subjects" in the counties of Lancaster

and Chester. The Cheshire commission notified all concerned that "the

King hath deputed the Lord Stanley, the Lord Strange, and Sir William

Stanley to have the rule and leading of all persons appointed to do

the King's service when they be warned against the King's rebels, and

if any rebels arrived in those parts that then all the power that they

could make should be ready to assist the said lords and knight upon

their faith and (al) legiances." The Lancashire commission required the

"knights, esquires, and gentlemen, and others" of the county "to give

their attendance upon the Lords Stanley and Strange to do the King's

Grace service against his rebels in whatsover place within this Royaume

(realm) they fortuned to tarry." Yet at that very moment Lord Stanley

was pledged to Richmond's cause, and as steward of the Royal Household

was sending him information of all Richard's plans. Thus did the

misguided Crouchback thrust into the hands of the Stanleys the power

which, a few short months later, upon the field of Bosworth, was to be

used against him with such fatal effect.

The records of Lyme as well as the old annalists and chroniclers are

silent as to the part which Sir Peter Legh bore in the great struggle

on Redland Heath[59] when the sun of the Plantagenets went down, and

the claims of the rival Roses were finally decided; but we may be

well assured that when commissions were addressed to "all the knights,

esquires, and gentlemen" of Lancashire and Cheshire, and Lord Stanley

was to "have their rule and leading," Sir Peter would not be idle or

allow his armour to rust unused. His house owed allegiance to the White

Rose. Richard had been his guest at Bradley, and had then conferred an

annuity upon him; duty and gratitude should, therefore, equally have

bound him to the cause of his Sovereign, but whether he was with the

"stout fellows in white surcoats and hoods" who followed his cousin

Sir John Savage into the thick of the fight, or in the camp of Lord

Stanley, who looked down upon the fray with calculating judgment,

beguiling both combatants with promises and assurances of sympathy

while waiting to see on which side victory was likely to fall, we have

no means of knowing. At ten o'clock on the morning of that memorable

22nd of August, 1485, while the sun, mounting high in the heavens,

flashed on pike, and corslet, and helm, and brightened every pennon

that lagged in the lazy air, with a great shout and a rattling shower

of arrows the fight began. "Lord! how hastily," says Holinshed, "the

soldiers buckled their helmets--how quickly the archers bent their bows

and frushed their feathers--how readily the billmen shook their bills

and proved their staves, ready to approach and join when the terrible

trumpet should sound the bloody blast to victory or death." The Duke

of Norfolk, who led the van of the royal army, singled out the Earl of

Oxford, and engaged him in a personal encounter, for in those days the

leaders deemed it a point of honour to fight hand to hand; his vizor

was hewn off by a single blow, an arrow from a distance pierced his

brain through his broken helmet, and he fell lifeless to the ground.

The brave Surrey, hurrying up to avenge the death of his father, was

overpowered by Sir John Savage, who led the left wing of Richmond's

army, when he requested that his life might be taken to save him from

dying by an ignoble hand. He was led to the rear, but lived to be

the Surrey of Flodden Field, and the worthy transmitter of "all the

blood of all the Howards," But the men whom Richard had loaded with

benefits deserted him in the hour of his need with a treachery that

proclaimed that the knell of chivalry was rung. Lord Stanley, who three

nights before had held a secret interview with Richmond at Atherstone,

stirred not a finger, nor moved a man, until the fate of the battle was

decided, when he threw off his disguise and charged boldly against his

master on his stepson's side. No strategy could now be of avail, and,

in the effort of despair, Richard made the final charge upon his rival.

Descrying Richmond, he put spurs to his horse, and with lance in rest

rushed towards him, when, in the nick of time, Sir William Stanley,

"with three thousand tall men," closed in and Richard fell overpowered,

with wounds enough to have let out a hundred lives, and murmuring with

his last breath, "Treason! Treason! Treason!" The royal army was but a

rope of sand, and when the shout went up that Richard King of England

had bitten the turf his troops, three-fourths of whom were ready to

side with the strongest, rushed in inglorious retreat, the victors

following in hot pursuit The fight lasted but two short hours, yet on

the morrow many a whimpled dame mourned the loss of her belted lord,

and many a sobbing Joan and village Winifred grieved for husband and

lover slain at Bosworth Field.

When the fight was ended, Lord Stanley, ever the faithful adherent of

the party of good luck, led the descendant of Cadwallader to the slope

of the hill at Stoke Golding, ever after called Crown Hill. A knight

handed him the battered circlet of gold which adorned the chapeau of

estate Richard had worn upon his salade or head piece, and, commanding

the attendants to kneel, he placed it on the brow of the victorious

Earl and proclaimed him "Conqueror and King." Meanwhile the stripped

and mutilated corpse of him who at the morning's rise led a gallant

army to assured victory, "trussed like a calf and naked as he came into

the world," was flung across a horse and carried in triumph behind a

pursuivant at arms to Leicester, where, after being exposed to the gaze

of the scornful mob for two hot summer days, it was buried without

ceremony in the church of the Gray Friars.