No self glory stirred the mind of the chivalrous soldier, and no thought had he of "storied urn" to record his gallant deeds. The Earl of Derby felt keenly the loss of his old friend and comrade, and in his last solemn moments, when passing through Leigh on his way to the scaffold at Bolton, his earnestly expressed wish was that he might be permitted to dismount from his horse and go into St. Nicholas' chapel to cast a last long look upon the honourable grave where his faithful companion in arms lay at rest.

Sir Thomas Tyldesley had married in early life Frances, only daughter of Ralph Standish, of Standish, near Wigan, and by her had a son Edward, born in 1635, who succeeded as heir; Thomas, born in 1642, and living in 1702; Ralph, born in 1644, and living in 1694; and seven daughters. Edward, the eldest son, following in the steps of his father, was an ardent supporter of the Stuarts, and when Charles II., after the restoration of monarchy, proposed to create a new order of knighthood to be called the order of the "Royal Oak," as a reward to some of his more faithful adherents, Edward Tyldesley was one of the Lancashire men selected to receive the honour, and would have done so had not the project, from considerations of prudence, been abandoned. Having some cause to believe that he would, on the Restoration, receive from the Crown a grant of the lands in Layton Hawes, near Blackpool, in recognition of the services rendered by his father and himself, he began the erection of a residence near the south shore called Fox Hall, a portion of the walls of which may still be seen in the more modern erection known as the Fox Hall Hotel, placing over the gateway a sculptured figure of the device that had inspired the enthusiasm of his father's soldiers in many a hard-contested fight—a pelican feeding her young, or, as the heralds have it, in piety, surrounded by the motto Tantum Valet Amor Regis et Patriæ—and here he occasionally resided during the later years of his life. He was twice married, his first wife being Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Fleetwood, of Colwich, in Staffordshire, who bore him two sons, Thomas, born April 3rd, 1657, and Edward, and two daughters. After her decease he espoused Elizabeth, daughter of Adam Beaumont, of Whiteley, and by her he had a daughter, Catherine, who died unmarried. His death occurred between the years 1685 and 1687, when the eldest son by his first marriage, Thomas Tyldesley, succeeded to the estates, with the exception of the lands in Tyldesley, which had been previously disposed of. In 1679, being then twenty-two years of age, he married Eleanor, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Holcroft, of Holcroft. This lady, who was only fourteen years of age at the time of her marriage, brought Holcroft Hall to the Tyldesleys. By her Thomas Tyldesley had a son, Edward, his heir, and four daughters. On the death of his wife he again entered the marriage state, his second wife being Mary, daughter of Alexander Rigby, of Layton, and the co-heiress of her brother, Sir Alexander Rigby, son and heir of the "grateful cornet" who erected the monument in Wigan Lane to the memory of the gallant Sir Thomas Tyldesley, and by her was father of three sons—Charles, Fleetwood, and James; and two daughters—Agatha and Winifred. To this Thomas Tyldesley we are indebted for the interesting personal records contained in a "diary" written during the years 1712-13-14, which has in recent years been published under the able editorship of Messrs. Joseph Gillow and Anthony Hewitson. He died in 1715, shortly before the breaking out of the rebellion, in the preparation for which there is good reason to believe he had been concerned, and was buried at Churchtown, near Garstang, January 26th,[75] his eldest son Edward succeeding. On the Jacobite rising in 1715 Edward Tyldesley, with the representatives of many other of the old Catholic families who had upheld the banners of Charles I., hastened to support the cause of his grandson. For his share in the rising he was put upon his trial in London, but, although the evidence of a number of witnesses left no possible doubt that he had led a body of men against the King's forces, he was fortunate enough to obtain an acquittal, a result which so provoked the anger of Baron Montagu, a sort of Whig Jeffreys, who presided over the court, that he openly rebuked the jury for their verdict, himself failing to see that the harrowing records of the "bloody assize at Lancaster" had produced a revulsion in popular feeling, and that the spirit of vindictiveness manifested by the government of the Hanoverian King had caused even Protestant juries to manifest a feeling of commiseration for those of their countrymen who still retained a feeling of devoted attachment for the head of the exiled house of Stuart, whom they looked upon as their legitimate sovereign.

At the time of his death, in 1725, Myerscough, which had been held for so many generations, had passed from the possession of the Tyldesleys, having, as is supposed, been sold to satisfy the demands of Thomas Tyldesley the father's creditors, but Holcroft Hall, inherited from his mother, as well as Morleys, still remained. By his wife Dorothy, who survived him, Edward Tyldesley had, in addition to a daughter (Catherine), a son (James), who succeeded as heir to both Morleys and Holcroft. True to the traditions of his family, he remained faithful in his adherence to the exiled dynasty, and when Charles Edward, the young Pretender, appeared in Lancashire, he took up arms and joined the rebel forces. From this time the fortunes of the family seemed gradually to decay. Myerscough, as we have seen, had been already alienated, and, in 1745, Morleys, which had been acquired two centuries previously by a marriage with the heiress of Thomas Leyland, was sold, and gradually the remnants of the once large estates were mortgaged or sold.

James Tyldesley died in August, 1765. His will bears date 8th of February, of that year, and was proved at Chester, April 23, 1768. Thomas Tyldesley, the eldest son, succeeded to Holcroft, the only estate remaining in the family's possession, the other issue being three sons and one daughter, all of whom seem to have drifted into a state of comparative poverty, their descendants being now to be looked for in a much lower position in the social scale than that held for so many generations by the owners of the proud name of Tyldesley.

To return to the old ancestral home at Wardley. As previously stated, Thurstan Tyldesley, who died in 1553, was twice married; his inquisition post-mortem was taken in the year of his decease, when, in accordance with the provisions of his will, the family estates were divided between the children of each marriage, Tyldesley and Wardley falling to the lot of Thomas, the son borne him by his first wife, and Myerscough to Edward, the issue of his second wife. In the early part of the reign of Elizabeth the Wardley estate, which had been held by the Tyldesleys for a period of three centuries, was sold in parcels, when the old manor house became the property of Gilbert Sherrington of Lincoln's Inn, a busy Lancashire lawyer, and at his death it passed to his brother Francis Sherrington, a successful trader and money-lender, who had been at one time located at Wigan. Subsequently Wardley became the property of Roger Downes, son and heir of Roger, a younger son of the ancient house of Downes, of Worth and Shrigley, in Cheshire, by a marriage with Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Alexander Worsley. Roger Downes, the younger, who was living at Wardley in 1613, twice represented Wigan—one of the four Lancashire boroughs entitled to send representatives to Parliament before the passing of the Reform Act in 1832—first in 1601, and again in 1620. On the 24th July, 1 Charles I. (1625), he was appointed by the Earl of Derby Vice-chamberlain of Chester, during pleasure (_durante bene placito_), an office he continued to hold under the Earl and his son, Lord Strange, until his death in July, 1638, when Orlando Bridgeman, son of the Bishop of Chester, was appointed by James Lord Strange his successor, much to the displeasure of John Bradshaw, the future president of the High Commission Court, who was then Attorney-general for Cheshire, and, as Seacombe affirms, had applied for the office.[76] In the will of Sir Alexander Barlow, of Barlow Hall, near Manchester, dated 4th April, 1631, Roger Downes, of Wardley, is joined with Sir George Gresley, Knight and Baronet (of Drakelowe), as overseer, and is therein described by the testator as his "loving cosen;" and a few years later, when Richard Halliwell, landlord of the Bull's Head Inn, in the Market Place, opposite the Cross, in Manchester—a successful vintner, who had managed to accumulate a considerable landed estate—made his will (May 12th; 1638), he desired that his "friend, the Right Worshipful Roger Downes, Esquire," should act as his overseer.

Roger Downes was twice married, his first wife being Elizabeth, daughter of Myles Gerard, of Ince, by whom he had a son Roger, who predeceased him. His second wife was Ann, daughter of John Calvert, of Cockerham, and she bore him, in addition to a daughter, Jane, who became the wife of Ralph Snede, of Keele, in Staffordshire, three sons, Francis, Lawrence, and John. Concerning Francis, a curious story is related by Hollingworth in his "Mancunienses." He had, it seems, "revolted from the reformed religion," when his neighbour, Sir Cecil Trafford, of Trafford, who was known as "a cruel persecutor of Papists," resolved before he resorted to harsher measures to attempt the reconversion of his friend by the force of argument; but he reckoned without his host, for in reasoning the Catholic proved himself too clever for the Protestant, and so thoroughly argued Sir Cecil out of his beliefs that he abjured his own religion and became a convert to the Roman faith; and from that time the Traffords, who had been among the earliest adherents of the Reformed faith in Lancashire, have been steady and consistent Catholics.

Francis Downes, who represented Wigan in the Parliament of 1625, predeceased his father, and died issueless, as did also his brother Lawrence, the estates, on the death of Roger Downes in 1638, devolving upon the youngest son, John Downes, who had married Penelope, one of the daughters of Sir Cecil Trafford, an alliance that explains the anxious desire manifested by Sir Cecil to effect the conversion of his son-in-law's elder brother.

John Downes, who succeeded on the death of his father to the Wardley estate, was an ardent adherent of King Charles in the unhappy struggle between that monarch and his Parliament, and in September, 1642, when Lord Strange, having completed his arrangements with the commissioners of array, appointed Warrington as the place of meeting, he armed and equipped his tenantry, and appeared with the host of other Lancashire chieftains to support the cause of the sovereign. Before the month had drawn to a close he was at Manchester, having accompanied Lord Strange and Sir Thomas Tyldesley in their fruitless expedition to secure the town for the King. He died in May, 1648, leaving an only son, Roger, his heir, then an infant a few months old, and a daughter Penelope.

Roger Downes, who succeeded as heir to the patrimonial estates on the death of his father, John Downes, in 1648, was the last of the family seated at Wardley. His history is not a pleasant one to contemplate. Living in an age when the people could take delight in the dissoluteness of the sovereign, he abandoned himself to the vicious courses of the time and became one of the most profligate of the profligate court of Charles the Second. The patrimony which had descended to him was wasted in riotous extravagance, and, to use the figurative language that Johnson applied to Rochester, "he blazed out his youth and his health in lavish voluptuousness," and brought his career to a violent and untimely end at the early age of twenty-eight. He was the Roger Downes of whom Lucas speaks, when he says that, according to tradition, while in London, in a drunken frolic, he vowed to his companions that he would kill the first man he met; when, sallying forth, he ran his sword through a poor tailor. Soon after this, being in a riot, a watchman made a stroke at him with his bill, which severed his head from his body, and the skull was enclosed in a box and sent to his sister at Wardley Hall. "The skull," adds the narrator, "has been kept at Wardley ever since, and many superstitious notions are entertained respecting it." The late Mr. Roby, in his entertaining "Traditions of Lancashire" wrought the incidents into a pathetic story, under the title of the "Skull House." Tradition, which always delights in the marvellous, took up the story, and many and incredible are the legends which the ghastly relic of mortality has given rise to. Certain it is that from time immemorial a human skull has had an abiding place at Wardley, carefully secured in an aperture in the wall beside the great staircase. According to popular belief, the grim fixture is as strongly averse to removal as the miraculous skull of "Dickey of Tunstead," which caused so much trouble to the engineers when constructing the railway near Chapel-en-le-Frith some years ago. Its rayless sockets, we are told, love to look upon the scenes of its former enjoyments, and it never fails to punish with severity those who venture to disturb or lay irreverent hands upon it. How the story originated it is impossible to say, but, though a skull, whitened by long exposure, is still exhibited, it is very certain that it never graced the shoulders of young Roger Downes. Thomas Barritt, the antiquary, in his MS. pedigrees, gives the following explanation:—"Thos. Stockport," he says, "told me the skull belonged to a Romish priest who was executed at Lancaster for seditious practices in the time of William III. He was most likely the priest at Wardley, to which place his head being sent, might be preserved as a relique of his martyrdom," and he adds, "The late Rev. Mr. Kenyon, of Peel, and librarian of the College in this town (Manchester), told me about the year 1779 the family vault of Downes in Wigan Church had about that time been opened, and a coffin discovered, on which was an inscription to the memory of the above young Downes. Curiosity led to the opening of it, and the skeleton, head and all, was there; but whatsoever was the cause of his death, the upper part of his skull had been sawed off, a little above the eyes, by a surgeon, perhaps by order of his friends, to be satisfied of the nature of his disease; his shroud was in tolerable preservation. Mr. Kenyon showed me some of the ribbon that tied the suit at the arms, wrists, and ankles; it was of a brown colour. What it was at first could not be ascertained." The name of Roger Downes is perpetuated on a massive marble slab affixed to the wall of Wigan Church, in which his remains are interred. It is surmounted by the arms of the family—sable, a stag lodged argent, and bears the following inscription:—_Rogerus Downes de Wardley, Armiger, filius Johannes Downes, hujus Comitatus Armigeri, obijt. 27 Junij. 1676. Ætatis suæ 28._

Roger Downes having died unmarried, the family estates, including Wardley, devolved upon his only sister and sole heiress, Penelope, who conveyed them in marriage (31 Charles II, 1679-80) to Richard Savage, of Rock Savage, who succeeded as fourth Earl Rivers of the new creation, a title that had originally been held by the father-in-law (Woodville) of Edward IV., the Savages deriving through the marriage of an ancestor with the aunt of a former earl. Lord Rivers took a prominent part in public affairs during the eventful reign of Queen Anne. As a soldier and statesman he displayed no mean abilities, and, possessing these qualities, he was not unfrequently employed on complimentary and diplomatic missions. In 1706-7 he was ordered to the command of the English forces in Spain, and at the same time received the appointment of ambassador to King Charles, and some few years later (1712) he was sent on a diplomatic mission to the Elector of Brunswick prior to the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht, that famous landmark of modern history which put an end to the wars of Queen Anne, secured the Protestant succession to the English throne, and separated for ever the crowns of France and Spain. He did not long survive this last mission, his death occurring August 18th, 1712, the only surviving issue by his marriage with the heiress of Wardley being a daughter, Elizabeth, who about the year 1706 married James Barry, fourth Earl of Barrymore, who was then a widower, and by whom she had an only child, Penelope, of whom anon.

The career of Earl Rivers was not unmarked by the libertinism which formed so prominent a characteristic of society in the age in which he lived. In addition to the daughter by his marriage with Penelope Downes—Elizabeth Savage, who became heiress of her mother's estates as well as those of her father—he had an illegitimate daughter by Mrs. Colydon, who married, in 1714, Frederick Earl of Rochford, to whom it is said she conveyed a fortune of £60,000; he was also the reputed father of the poet, Richard Savage, a writer better known for his misfortunes than for any peculiar novelty or merit in his poetry—the offspring of an illicit intercourse with the notorious Countess of Macclesfield, who acquired an unenviable notoriety as the heroine of the famous law case which followed upon the birth of her base-gotten son. Some curious particulars of this extraordinary scandal are to be found in the records of the time. The countess, under the name of Madame Smith and wearing a mask, was delivered of a male child in Fox-court, near Brook-street, Holborn, by Mrs. Wright, a midwife, on Saturday, January 16, 1697-8. Lord Macclesfield denied the paternity, and established the impossibility of his being the father of the child his countess had borne. A divorce was granted in 1698, but, as the law deemed the earl accountable through his own profligacy for the malpractices of his wife, he was required to repay the portion he had received with her on marriage, and with this she secured another husband in the person of Colonel Brett, by whom she had a daughter, Anne Brett, the impudent mistress of George I. The inhuman mother disowned her illegitimate offspring by Lord Rivers, Richard Savage, and had him placed under the charge of a poor woman who brought him up as her son, but Lady Mason, her mother, caused him to be removed to a school near St. Alban's and educated him at her own expense. Earl Rivers died without making any provision for his unfortunate son, a circumstance that was due, as Johnson says, to the fact that in the earl's last illness the degraded countess—then Mrs. Brett—had the inhumanity to state that Savage was dead, and through this falsehood the boy was deprived of a provision that was intended for him. It has been said that young Savage was an impostor, and the opinion was held by Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Johnson, who says: "In order to induce a belief that the Earl Rivers, on account of a criminal connection with whom Lady Macclesfield is said to have been divorced from her husband by Act of Parliament, had a peculiar anxiety about the child which she bore to him, it is alleged that his lordship gave him his own name, and had it duly recorded in the register of St. Andrew's, Holborn; I have," he adds, "carefully inspected that register, and I cannot find it." That Boswell should have failed in the discovery is explained by a reference to "The Earl of Macclesfield's case," presented to the House of Lords in 1697-8, from which it appears that the child was registered by the name of Richard, the son of John Smith, and christened on Monday, January 18th, in Fox-court, and this statement is confirmed by the following entry in the register of St. Andrew's, Holborn:—

Jany. 1696-7, Richard, son of John Smith, and Mary, in Fox Court, in Gray's Inn Lane, Baptised the 18th.

Notwithstanding the discredit that has been thrown on Savage's story, there can be little doubt of its truth. It was universally believed at the time, and no attempt was ever made by the countess to contradict or to invalidate any of the statements connected with it. Moreover, he was openly recognised in the house of Lord Tyrconnell, a nephew of his reputed mother, with whom he lived on equal terms, and who allowed him a sum of £200 a year until Savage quarrelled with him, when the peer stopped the allowance, and the hapless poet was again sent adrift upon the world. He was also on terms of acquaintance with the Countess of Rochford, the illegitimate daughter of Earl Rivers by Mrs. Colydon. Savage's folly and extravagance left him almost without a friend. Pope, whom he had supplied with the "private intelligence and secret incidents" that add poignancy to the satire of the "Dunciad," was about the last to withdraw his aid, and the poor fellow was eventually left to wander about in a state of destitution. He repaired to the West of England, and while in Bristol was arrested for a small debt, and being unable to find sureties was thrown into prison. During his incarceration he was taken ill, and on the morning of the 1st of August, 1743, was found dead in his bed, having been unable to procure any medical assistance. It is related that the keeper of the prison, who had treated him with kindness, buried him at his own expense.

Before his decease, Lord Rivers had executed indentures of lease and release, dated 13th June, 1711, by which his large estates in Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, and Essex were vested in trustees for the use of himself for life and remainder to him in tail; remainder to the use of his cousin, John Savage, a Romish ecclesiastic, who inherited the earldom, but never assumed the title; remainder to his illegitimate daughter, Bessy Savage, afterwards Countess of Rochford; remainder to his own right heirs. From some irregularities in the disposal of the property, the will was disputed, and eventually an Act of Parliament (7th George I., 1720) was obtained for the disposal of the estates, which were declared to be vested in trust for the earl's son-in-law, James, fourth earl of Barrymore, with remainder to Lady Penelope Barry, the only issue of his marriage with the Lady Elizabeth Savage, and the granddaughter of Richard Earl Rivers and his wife Penelope Downes, the heiress of Wardley.

Lady Penelope Barry, who was a minor, in 1720 brought the estates of her family in marriage to General James Cholmondeley, second surviving son of George Earl of Cholmondeley. Her ladyship seems to have inherited the frailties of her father, for in 1737 her husband obtained a sentence of divorce against her for adultery with one Patrick Anderson, a surgeon. She died childless about the year 1742;[77] General Cholmondeley, who survived her many years but did not remarry, died at the age of sixty-seven, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, October 19th, 1775, when, in accordance with the provisions of a settlement made in 1729, the estates passed to James Cholmondeley's great nephew, George James, fourth Earl and afterwards first Marquis of Cholmondeley, the father of William Henry Hugh, the present marquis, Hereditary Grand Chamberlain of England.

More than a century has elapsed since the historic house of Wardley was occupied by any direct descendant of its earlier lords. At one time it was in the occupation of a farmer, and subsequently was divided into several tenements, when it was allowed to fall into a state of decay, the humbler dwellers caring little for its antiquity, and content if they only could protect themselves from the elements and keep a roof above their heads. From the last representative of the Downes family the hall was conveyed by purchase to other owners, and for many years past it has formed part of the estates of the Earls of Ellesmere, to whom the grateful acknowledgments of all antiquaries are due for the thoughtful care they have taken in protecting it from further injury, as well as for the judgment they have exercised in carrying out the work of restoration. Within the last half century important renovations have taken place, and some portions have been rebuilt, but whatever has been done has been in perfect keeping with the architectural peculiarities of the original structure. The old mansion is now in a good state of repair, and, notwithstanding its situation in close proximity to a mining and manufacturing district, it furnishes a picturesque and singularly interesting example of a somewhat rare class of building, the moated dwelling of a gentleman of the fifteenth century.