Historic Sites of Lancashire and Cheshire / A Wayfarer's Notes in the Palatine Counties, Historical, Legendary, Genealogical, and Descriptive.

The windows—

which once told the story of the line of Jesse and dyed the pavement with their many-hued reflections had been despoiled of their painted glass, not by the ruthless reformers of the sixteenth century, but, as Mr. Stockdale, the historian of Cartmel, with good reason affirms, many years before, when a portion of the glass was carried off to beautify the church at Bowness, where it may still be seen; the few fragments, however, that remained were carefully preserved and protected from further risk of injury. That monopoliser of Church property, Thomas Holcroft, took away everything he could lay his hands on, including, as the survey expresses it, the "Belles, Lede, and Goodes," destroying at the same time whatever in his opinion might be described as relics of superstitious devotion. What he left undone the Iconoclasts of a later date very effectually accomplished. It is worthy of note, however, that in the troublous times of the Civil Wars Cartmel suffered little as compared with many other churches in the kingdom, the only injury it sustained being the perforation of the door at the west end of the south aisle with a number of shot holes—the work, as the inhabitants assure you, of Cromwell's troopers, which, if the story is to be relied on, must have been in 1644, when Colonel Rigby and his men, after plundering Dalton, passed the night at Cartmel on their way to Thurland Castle. It is more likely, however, to have been some of Prince Rupert's soldiers who thus left their mark behind them, for though Thomas Preston, of Holker, the patron of the church, was a staunch Royalist, the parson and the people of Cartmel were attached to the cause of the Parliament; and John Shaw, the puritan rector of Lymm, records in his diary that when he was there for a time, "preaching and catechising in season and out of season," he had "frequently some thousands of hearers," and that "usually the churches were so thronged by nine o'clock in the morning that he had much adoe to get to the pulpit." The diarist adds, "How the Prince Rupert's soldiers there caryed themselves at and near Cartmel, that country will tell to posterity," though, if it did, the "posterity" to whom it was told neglected to hand down the story.

It is only fair to say that some of the most reprehensible acts of vandalism to which the edifice has been subjected have been perpetrated within the present century. From the time of the Commonwealth until the Victorian era ecclesiastical architecture was comparatively neglected, and it is perhaps fortunate for the present generation that it should have been, else we might have seen many a grand old Gothic pile of pre-Reformation date destroyed to make room for miserable monstrosities of brick of the fashion of the Queen Anne and the Georgian periods, a style that a wretched taste has within the last few years sought to resuscitate. Little more than two generations ago architectural art was at its lowest ebb, with little prospect of its ever being revived. Utilitarianism was the order of the day, and, much as we are disposed to blame country churchwardens for their misdoings, half our indignation vanishes when we remember that they only followed the example set them by their betters. Fifty years ago or thereabouts the "Improvers" were let loose upon the ancient fane at Cartmel, when, as Mr. Stockdale in his Annales Caermoelensis tells us, "the wooden rails of the Harrington monument, split with the axe out of logs of oak, before the use of the plane or the general use of the saw (indices of high antiquity), were torn down and committed to the flames, and a smart iron railing put up in their stead. The quaintly-fashioned old font, at which the whole population of the parish of Cartmel—generation after generation—had been christened for nearly seven hundred years, was subjected anew to the mason's chisel, and fashioned into its present shape, and a modern date (1832) cut in large figures upon it. The old Matin Bell, which had summoned the monks of St. Mary to prayers for three hundred and fifty years, and afterwards the townspeople of Cartmel and the neighbourhood to their duties on saints' days and Sundays for nearly three hundred and fifty years more, was torn down from its resting place, and sold to a neighbouring gentleman—not to call his workmen and labourers to their prayers, but to warn them that the hour for the commencement of their daily toil had arrived." Since then, however, happier days have dawned upon the place.

It is somewhat remarkable that a church of so much historic interest and antiquity should possess so few sepulchral memorials of pre-Reformation date. The oldest known to exist is the tomb of William Walton, the first prior; it stands beneath a plain pointed arch on the north side of the high altar, and is covered with a grey marble slab, in the centre of which is an incised cross of floreated character, and the following inscription in Longobardic characters carved upon the edge—

HIC. IACET. FRATER. WILELMVS. DE. WALTONA.
PRIOR. DE. KERTMEL.

There are some other memorials of departed priors, though the inscriptions are too much worn to admit of their being deciphered; but the most imposing is a canopied tomb on which are the recumbent figures of a knight and his lady, placed beneath an arch on the south side of the choir. It is commonly known as the Harrington monument, and has long been a source of perplexity to antiquaries; there is no date discernible upon it, and considerable doubt exists as to where it came from—for it is clearly not in situ—and which of the Harringtons it was intended to commemorate. It has been variously assigned to Sir John Harrington of Hornby, who was knighted by Edward III. in recognition of his services in Scotland; to Sir Thomas Harrington, who married a daughter of the house of Dacre, and fell fighting on the side of the White Rose at Wakefield on the 31st of December, 1460—a day fatal to the House of York and scarcely less fatal to the victorious Lancastrians—and also to his son, Sir John Harrington, the brother-in-law of the black-faced Clifford, who received his death-blow fighting by his father's side in the same battle.

For the benefit of those who are curious in epitaphs we quote the following from a marble slab on one of the walls of the south transept:—

1600
Here before lyeth interred
Etheldred Thornbvrgh corps in dvst
In lyfe at death styll fyrmely fixed
On God to rest her steadfast trvst
Hir Father Justice Carvs was
Hir Mother Katherine his wiffe
Hir Husband William Thornbvrgh was
Whylst here she ledd this mortail lyff
The thyrde of Martch a year of grace
One thowsand fyve hundred ninetie six
Hir sowle departed this earthly plase
Of aage nighe fortie yeares a six
To whose sweet sovle heavenlye dwelling
Ovr Saviovr grant everlastinge.

There are other parts of the church that bespeak our attention. The north aisle, commonly known as the Piper Choir—though how it acquired that name nobody seems to know—retains its original stone vaulting, and is lighted by Perpendicular windows, in which some fragments of mediæval painted glass still remain. The south aisle is perfect, and appears to have been widened at some period subsequent to its original foundation. In the church books it is described as "Lord Harrington's Queare," but is now usually designated the parish or town choir, from the supposition that it constituted the former parish church, which the prior and his canons had been obliged to enlarge owing to some dispute between the parishioners and themselves. The windows lighting it are of early Decorated character of varied design, and on one side is the original sedilia for the officiating priests, as well as the piscina in which it was their custom to rinse the chalice at the time of the celebration of the mass.

Having completed our inspection of the various chapels, the faithful custos who accompanied us, and who, by the way, though a rusticus abnormis sapiens, is an enthusiast about the church, led the way up to the triforium, and thence to the top of the lower lantern or tower, where we had an opportunity of examining more closely the peculiar disposition of the superstructure. It would seem that a century or two after the completion of the original tower the fraternity took it into their heads to erect a bell-tower, but instead of removing the parapet and raising the walls of the existing structure, as at Kirkstall, or building a new tower like that of prior Moon at Bolton Abbey, they determined on making the most of the one they possessed, and constructed four cross arches, each springing from the centre of the side walls, on which they reared their campanile with a result that said more for their originality than their regard for architectural effect. A few steps lead up to the roof of the second tower, whence a good view of the surrounding country is obtained, though the range is somewhat restricted by reason of the comparatively low position the church occupies and the nearness of the hills which environ the Cartmel Vale.

Descending again into the body of the church, we passed through the Piper Choir, and were next ushered into the vestry, where, to our surprise, we found in addition to the ordinary registers and churchwardens' accounts a library of some three hundred volumes, including many rare and curious works bequeathed to the parish in 1692 by Thomas Preston, of Holker, including a black-letter Bible in six volumes, printed at Basle in 1502; a copy of the works, also in black-letter, of Thomas Aquinas, printed at Vienna in 1509; an incomplete copy of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," dated 1596; a Virgil of the same date; a curious little volume, "Apophthegemes New and Old, collected by the Right Honourable Francis Lo. Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, 1625;" and a folio copy of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The old clerk sets great store by his literary treasures, and well he may, for they are such as few church libraries can equal, and are in themselves enough to make a collector covetous.

The parish registers, which begin in 1559, contain many curious entries relating to local families, and many a sad story of lives lost in crossing the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay; one of the entries records the disaster which befel a pleasure party, of whom nine were drowned, while crossing the Leven Sands on their return from Ulverston Whitsuntide fair, where they had been to purchase the wedding garments for two of their number who were about to be married.[47] The church accounts contain, among other things, a very complete record of the doings of the "twenty-four sworn men,"[48] an influential body whose jurisdiction extended over a parish nearly fourteen miles in length, and whose duties were as multifarious as they were onerous, embracing almost everything, from exterminating mouldiwarpes (moles) and choosing churchwardens to repairing organs and regaling fox-hunters. But there are other curiosities preserved in the vestry at Cartmel; among them is an umbrella of ancient date and cumbrous proportions, which our cicerone tells us was used in times past to protect the clergyman from the weather when performing the burial service in the graveyard.[49] It is of immense weight, and has a thick oilcloth cover that reminds us of Swift's lines in the Tatler—

as well as of Gay's Trivia—

The twilight was deepening when we passed out of the stately old pile, and, bidding adieu to our pleasant, gossiping guide, turned to depart. The sun had gone down in the western heavens, and the mists were gathering thick among the surrounding hills, shrouding them in a dreamy obscurity; the lofty gables and broad squat tower clad in night's sober livery seemed to have gained additional massiveness and seen through the dun medium assumed a shadowy weird-like form; the old market-place seemed to have lulled itself into a still deeper quietude; a few of the villagers were lingering about their cottage doors, and as we passed on our way a light might now and then be seen glimmering from the casement of some humble dwelling, but there was nought to disturb the sense of calmness and repose. The stillness deepened as the light declined, and everything seemed to have become wrapped in slumber, save that now and then we could hear the faint gurgling of some tiny rill trickling down the hill side, or the baying of a watchdog at some distant moorland farm mingling with the subdued rumble of a railway train bearing its living freight across the Leven Sands. One by one the silent watchers came forth to begin their nightly vigil, guarding the slumbering earth as 'twere a sleeping child, and then the pale queen of night, rising slowly from behind the lonely fells, hung her silver crescent in the blue vault above, and spread a tender radiance on the tranquil world below. Keeping the dark woods of Holker on our right, a short half-hour's walk along a lonely road brought us to the little village of Cark, where—

Cark Hall, an old gabled manor house, for generations the residence of the Curwens and the Rawlinsons. Cark is a station on the Furness line, and a few minutes after our arrival we were seated in the railway carriage and rolling along at a rapid rate beneath the wild limestone crags, over the wild estuary of the Leven, and through the devious windings of the valleys of Greenodd and Haverthwaite on the way to our comfortable resting place upon the shores of Windermere, bent on doing justice to the good fare the "Swan" at Newby Bridge affords, and with the mind stored with pleasant memories of quiet Cartmel and its grand old priory church.

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

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.

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.

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—

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.

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—

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 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

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

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.

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—

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—

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—

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]

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—